


In Other Words [February Shocker]

by megaunit



Category: The Orville (TV)
Genre: 3D Chess, 40k Of Absolute Bullshit Please Enjoy, Impressions, M/M, Marksmanship, Piano, Romance?, Singing, Spot The OC drinking game, Swordfighting, and talking down on himself, drawing cartoon flipbooks, ed begin great at:, lots of depression and anxiety and bad attempts at using character voices, seriously there are too many songs in this, some yuck descriptions of wounds but nothing too ooug, what kind of bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 15:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18943660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megaunit/pseuds/megaunit
Summary: “I don’t-” Gordon nearly gets him again at the middle of his emotionally-charged confession- “Want to go through it again.”“I know.”“Do you?”“I scraped you off the fuckin’ ground, but, no. I guess I don’t...” Which is the truth, to some extent. Gordon had given Ed supports, but between the two, Kelly had become the antagonist. Ed hadn’t accepted the wrong he’d done, beyond what he remembered from his and Kelly’s arguments. Gordon hadn’t understood- nor had Ed –that the breaking of their marriage was a failure on both parts. Over time, his acceptance of his role in it became almost as obsessive as his animosity towards Kelly.And along the way, Ed decided that he didn’t need love.Yet here they both are, Gordon saying “computer, play ABBA’s Take A Chance on Me,” ready to keep scraping Ed up and up until he gets back into a shape he can start feeling proud of, until Gordon has shown has shown Ed just how deserving of it he is.And Ed is reminded of how much he loves this man.[In which Ed is terrified of love, and swordfights Gord a bunch to figure it all out. Other stuff happens too]





	In Other Words [February Shocker]

**Author's Note:**

> if youre here for quality plot go somewhere else cuZ HEY HEY IT’S LOVING ED MERCER HOURS yall i interrupt everything im working on to finally finish off and bring you a scrappy 'its loving ed hours' drabble that is super silly and 1000% for my own stress relief- I had a laptop crash on the seventh of may and now ive got a pc with Microsoft word AND ?! WORD COUNT IS A THING AND I NEED TO STOP CHECKING IT [im also SO unbelievably happy to have spell checking! Yes!!]
> 
> This was supposed to be three or four snapshots of ed being smort.  
> But.  
> self-control? never heard of her.  
> Here’s Frank Sinatra and ABBA also. Because it just seems like something ed would do. [and it is something seth mcfarlane has done, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzVprkrNlT8 YAYAYA free ed singing stuff] [and the ABBA appeared because I was kindaaaa listenin to my brother watching mama mia while writin the fighting scenes and.. it just wormed its way in there and I did not have the heart to take it out oops. Lowkey copying the 9 to 5 fight scene’s feel] [and now there’s PIANO. My 5 yrs of training are not coming in handy but my henry mancini knowledge sure is because PIANO! Listened to a tonne of his stuff for that whole section and it reminded me of my high school piano teacher ;-; great upsetti] [this ended up having waaay more music than I wanted but its There Now What Can I Do About It Sorry im a cheesy fool]
> 
> ‘The isaac and ed playing chess’ thing is a lil kirk/spock callback from tos. There are also a lot of stupid in-jokes i have with myself/some general memery, so \o/ if you enjoy it i will be real damn happy because i dont know who else it would cater to [but i would love to hear from you! Even if ive heard from you before!1 yall are awesome]
> 
> ed is cool and i appreciate this self-conscious man so much, here are a Big Bunch of snapshots [some short, some not-so-short.. most not-short-at-All] of him and all his talents and him kicking ass a lot and also him and gordon getting together because u can Bet Your Bucket that this is all im gonna write about ever, on here [and also the one curt/owen spies are forever fic that might also happen in the future but \o/Orville!!11]
> 
> Also look I know I make Ed pass the fuck out a lot okay. I don’t know how to stop. I only let him do it like.. Once, in this. That’s better than some others. I swear he has a will of his own and just.. passes out if. Hes out of my control, guys. He has a mind of his own and he Just Wants To Sleep.
> 
>  
> 
> I always write essays at the start of my fics. I have a lot to say ;-;

 

 

**DAY 01**

***Commander Greyson's Log Notes:***

***Tulo 17, 4 th Class-M from center of the Tulo System. **

**Distress Signal- lifesigns undetectable due to atmospheric makeup.***

 

If Kelly could summarize Ed's personality by one select part of his whole, she would say this:

Ed Mercer has never missed a shift of work in his entire life. He holds that standard very highly, had kept it going after perfect attendance at Union Point, and at his high-school and grade-school. The dependability of getting up and going on without fail is part of what propels him in the eyes of his crew and his higher-ups as a leader. It is what makes him an exemplary Captain- the fact that he fucking _hates_ losing.

It is also a fatal flaw. If there is something he can do, _he will do it_.

And, being the self-deprecating person that he is, Ed often runs into things without anyone else knowing his abilities. As he never talks himself up, modesty becoming a double-edged sword when sharpened too much, he ends up appearing incautious and even reckless, at times.

Kelly knows this, more than anyone.

Given the situation at hand, Ed yelling _"it's a goddamn distress signal, of course I'm gonna go!"_ at Kelly, he's not met with the most confident of responses.

The distress signal is infinitesimal. Tiny. An occasional ping, no information alongside the co-ordinates of its origin- either from old or damaged tech, or blocked by the planet's makeup. Isaac's output on the planet below indicated a reactivity to plasma in the atmosphere. Thus, Ed has jumped to a logical conclusion of going down with a select team and _no guns_. In his mind, the plan makes sense and it's not being implemented fast enough. Tapping impatiently on the arm of his chair while Gordon brings the Orville to a stop at close orbit around the planet.

"Captain," Isaac does not turn to Ed as he speaks, too busy interpreting the readings on his dashboard, all sorts of lit-up displays, "firing even a small burst of plasma in the planet's atmosphere could cause an explosive chain reaction. It is not stable for breathing, let alone for our PM-type firearms-"

"I know, I know." Kelly hears him say, can feel the stress emanating from him. On top of her own, it's hard not to shout at him to take a metaphorical step back.

Just because they'd had a bad run with the last distress signal does not mean he can make subjective choices with the power of his command that will put his own safety in jeopardy, never mind whoever goes planet-side with him. There isn't much Kelly can do to stop him, at this point, from going planet-side. But, maybe, if she could just steer him into not throwing himself headfirst into danger- "Gordon."

Ed, breaking out of his apparent stress, gets their helmsman's attention with a sharp and sudden call. Anything Kelly had wanted to say is held on the tip of her tongue.

"Yeah?"

"Who's that Lieutenant you spar with all the time?"

"Sam Michaels? And it's not _all_ the-" Gordon starts protesting, and Kelly hears the _"not the time"_ that Ed says to himself. The time for talking is all but over, on the bridge. There's little they can do from up here, for whoever is sending the signal out.

"Talla, have Lieutenant Michaels meet us in the shuttle bay, get one prepped to go down with combat suits and filter systems- Gord, let's go."

 _'Let's go,'_ as in he is going through with this. _‘Let’s go,_ ’ as in, Gordon _and_ Ed are to get on that shuttle, and that’s a big _oh hell no_ in Kelly's books.

"Ed!" She shouts, the visible calculation and subsequent _oh right, fuck_ on his face as he pulls up short, stopping only for a couple of seconds, Gordon overtaking him to go and get shit sorted ahead of him.

"Hand-to-hand is useless down there," He's nearly tripping over Gordon's stand-in Helmsman, running after Gordon before he's finished, "and as much as I love Talla and Bort, they're not great with a saber!"

" _Neither are you_ -" But he's gone, her frustration spinning through empty air, and she slumps her way into his chair. "For fucks sake."

"He didn't even record you assuming command." Talla says, voice full of the exasperation Kelly feels.

"I know." Drones Kelly, resting her head back until it hits the top of the chair. Ensign Roue, their new Navigator after John LaMarr, mutters something about _"very un-captain-ly behavior"._

"Does the Captain know how to use a-" Bortus starts to say, Kelly cutting in:

"I _know_!"

She stares through the window on the roof of the bridge and listens to the comms system, Isaac's analyses of the planet below, and the bickering between Roue and Gordon's stand-in about how Ed can just _be like that, sometimes_. If Kelly were in any mood to discuss it, she would be agreeing wholeheartedly. Instead, she settles for keeping an ear out for Ed and Gordon's statuses, and spares a laugh or two for Roue's anecdotes.

 

Gordon takes the shuttle into atmosphere while Ed fills Lieutenant Michaels in on the species that inhabit the world below. With their massive sword-like claws and ectothermic method of generating energy, they're the only beings that could inhabit such an inhospitable environment as Tulo 17.

They are massive bugs, by classification, but they are also very human somehow, and Ed hates everything about that.

For pump-up music, Gordon has put ABBA’s _Does Your Mother Know_. To anyone else this might be very inappropriate but, when you’ve been doing this shit as long as Gordon- and Ed -it’s better to dive into life-threatening situations with a good tune and beat. Better than a solemn mission briefing followed by anxiety-filled quietness, at least. Kelly would disagree.

But, Kelly isn’t here, and Ed is sure she will flash before his eyes several times in the mission to come, same as she has done each time he’s had a brush with death.

Sam Michaels _is_ here, putting her hand up with an ironic air, flat-line lips and tired, bored eyes. Ed has met her once or twice, always while she’s with Gordon, always when they’re both fresh out of the simulator, saber packs in hand. Hair tangled from the helmets, sweaty and red in the face.

Ed isn’t jealous.

Not at all, not in the slightest, no way no how.

He’s not in denial, either.

"Not that I’m complaining ‘bout getting’ out,, Sir, but why me?" Michaels asks, when he pauses long enough to give her an in to his overly-comprehensive debriefing. She sounds genuinely confused, even if he’s never witness Michaels convey emotion in any way, the few times he’s heard her speak.

"You know Gordon." He says, shrugs, trying to both match her disinterested tone and help sooth any possible worries. And, also, to smooth his own ruffled, green-eye patterned feathers that are completely out of place, here.

Covering all the bases, one would say. "He trusts you. That's good enough for me."

"You would stake the lives of the innocent on _his_ judgment." She is deadpan as ever and, at any other point in time, Ed would agree. Would laugh and make jokes at Gordon's expense.

Ed has seen Gordon win in five-on-one spars. Watched him take down all manners of competitors in a simulation and in real life using his gaudy saber lights more fitting to a child than a man in his early forties.

"I would stake _my_ life on his judgment, I have, and I would do so if it ever comes to it in the future."

Ed knows how fucking proficient Gordon is, knows how well he can hold himself against one, two, many more foes. Against something many times his size.

"Hate to break up your pow-wow," Gordon is saying, Ed can hear his smile, the proud one, small and mostly in the eyes, "but we're landing in a minute, a few meters from the action- great and all that you guys know what you’re doing, but what the hell am I up to?"

"Right." Ed comes up the shuttle until he's standing next to Gordon at the console and the shuttle’s main dashboard. Has no idea how Gordon knows where he's going but he sure is _going_. Top speed, the clouds thick to obscure objects as they come. With their current visibility- only worsening the closer they get to the distress signal -Gordon gets about ten meters warning to shift their trajectory and he is fucking masterful about it, if Ed does say so himself.

His fingers fly to where they need to go, and Ed’s fingers itch, a sudden want to be in his quarters, sat at his piano. Gordon’s eyes are right ahead on the front window, taking in all he can from what he’s given. Occasionally he flickers his sights to the corner of the window, where he’s projected a holo-display of the shuttle’s sonar readings. Not that it adds much to the view. Lack of sight aside, Gordon pilots them through the dusty, windy sky Tulo 17 presents them. It takes Ed a few seconds to realize he’s staring.

He tends to do that, and it’s fucking irritating. Bad for business, not to mention bad for his heart.

 _Right._ Ed jolts himself out of it, _the mission._ "I'm going to rely on you two to handle the bugs. Distract them, fight them off, I don't care- just get them away from our targets so I can get them onto the shuttle."

"That sounds awfully vague and suicidal for _all_ of us." Michaels grunts, rolling her eyes when Gordon reaches behind himself to whack at her.

"There's not much else _to do_ , Lieutenant, unless you have a better idea. Tulo 17's cave system is a closed space, low visibility for us and perfect hunting grounds for them. Anything too complex on our side could end badly. If you two stick together, it gives all of us less to think about, and might give you two less to work with."

She huffs and Ed guesses that's her agreeing at least a little more than she had before. "Stay close, keep them occupied long enough."

"And what about you, Captain?"

Gordon seems to tense at that, too.

"I'll be fine." Ed says to Michaels, and almost wants to punch himself in the face when Gordon slips up, nearly sending them through a giant cluster of fungi.

"Yeah, _Ed_ , what the fuck about you." He is stressing- Ed knows that if Gordon stresses, he won't stop until he's satisfied with his answer. Which means Ed will have to _tell him_ , won't he. _Great, just what I need_ , the little sarcastic voice in his head tells him, _a nice tonne of crushing humiliation before I die_. "Put the two of us together and run off alone without a _clue_ about how to use a saber? What’re you gonna do, punch the bugs?”

If Gordon could let go of the controls and cross his arms and glare at Ed on _that way_ that he does, Ed knows he’d be doing it by now. “I know why _I'm_ here, why are _you_ here?"

“I know how to use a-”

“Ed, I trust you, but your _stupidity_ needs limits-”

Ed braces himself.

" _Listen_ \- I- long story short, I asked an upperclassman to teach me how to sword-fight back at Union Point- I reckon I can at least defend myself well enough-"

"Yeah, so can Talla!" Reaching panic-mode, Gordon does let the controls go for a second to flail his arms in the air. Michaels uses the distraction to reach for Ed's belt, stealing his saber pack. She walks down between the seats to the back of the shuttle, inspecting it. Gordon returns his focus to flying as well as he can, nearing the source of the signal. "Ed, _seriously_ , a few lessons is-"

"It was- it was four years, okay? And I-" The shuttle lurches, Gordon turning it sideways and forcing it downwards to get through a high mound built to protect the low cave entrance, Ed grabbing onto the back of Gordon’s chair- "I _do_ practice,” Gordon laughs, high and thin. There is no hurt so Ed thinks he’s safe. Logically, he knows Gordon wouldn’t be mad about Ed keeping something like this a secret. The tiny scars across his heart make it harder to convince himself, make him go a bit frayed, a bit grumpy, at Gordon’s laughter. He’s well and truly sulking, losing control of his voice and being louder, more defensive than he means, “I- Every now and then, okay? It’s- I can do it."

"Why did I _not_ know this?!" At least there is confidence in Gordon's exclamation. He does trust Ed. Flying them practically blind into this cave and to their very probable deaths, at least Gordon still takes Ed’s word. Behind them, Michaels releases Ed's saber with a _whoosh_ and a flare of crimson light, whistles at the quality.

Ed shuts his eyes- “you, what, thought it was useful enough to go to _someone else_ about it, but not useful enough to take those classes with _me_ when _I_ asked you to-” He doesn’t have the time nor the will to unpack how Gordon says ‘someone else’ and ‘with me’; _knows_ that Gordon is messing with him, _hates_ the idea of Gordon feeling like anything but secondary in Ed’s life whether it’s a joke or not. Second only to work and _yeah, yeah_ , Ed is working on that. And now, looking at the back of Gordon’s head, the suffocating tunnels of an alien planet whizzing by- in the grand scheme of things, how big of a deal is Ed’s reasoning?

Besides, they might all die in a second, anyway.

This is as close to a confession as he’s ever going to get:

"Because when I first met you, you were doing it and it looked so cool, and I wanted to impress you!”

Silence.

The shuttle bangs into the roof of the tunnel and Gordon doesn’t react other than leaning over the dash, steering them faster and lower to the ground.

Michaels coughs.

There's another _whoosh_ when she powers down Ed’s saber and makes it retract, its red burn disappearing and making the flush on Ed’s face all the more real.

He can practically feel Gordon trying not to laugh.

"Ed." Gordon parks them in a hurry, grabs his helmet from its secure point under the dash and unlatches his own saber pack from his belt, not once looking at Ed, too busy checking his equipment over. " _Ed_ , I _have_ to laugh at you about this later."

He pats Ed on the shoulder and runs past him- Ed turns to Michaels, whose helmet is already on, suit lit up in Union blue and white. She chucks him his saber, he thinks he hears a wistful comment like _"I want that model, damn",_ and Gordon opens the door. ABBA cuts short. Outside, an eerie wind holds down the tunnel system, carrying screeches of the Tulo 17 bugs. Ed has to rush to slam his helmet over his head and seal it to his suit, Gordon shouting, _"remind me when we're back!"_ over his shoulder on his way out, dashing into the murky world that awaits, Michaels right behind him.

“Oh, we got trouble.” He whispers to himself on an off-key tune and, with scarcely a second to refocus, runs out into the domain of Tulo 17.

He’s greeted with a terrifying sight that very nearly chucks all that resolve right back out the window, overruns his embarrassment completely, turns it into boulders of fear that roll through his brain and chunks of sick in the pit of his stomach. A spider in the replicator has nothing on this, but Ed is also arachnophobic, so this- _this really doesn’t do it for him_. And, like any sight-reliant being, he has the very logical fear that builds from not being able to see much of his surroundings.

So this is his own personal hell brought into reality, really.

The urge to say _“computer, play Mamma Mia”_ is almost as overwhelming as his spike in anxiety.

The spores and dust and whatever else Isaac called it is clogging the air, gives shapes and shifts of shadows and little else, in the already low lighting of the cave. The bug-like inhabitants of Tulo 17 appear and are shaded, hidden from view. Glimpses of them come and go, ships in a lighthouse light. They've got their massive slicers raised- some already swinging at the blurs Ed knows are Gordon and Michaels. Two of these deadly built-in swords protrude from either side of the face, able to bend and extend like another one of their limbs. Their legs are long, three on each side along a hard-armored thorax. It gives them a height advantage. Allows them to cross distances in the blink of an eye on the squidgy, sandy surface. Tall tails curve over their bodies similar to how an Earth scorpion's would, the stinger far more elongated and moveable. From the excitement of the fight, the needle-like points drip a glowing poison, giving a thin coating to their backs and heads. The green tint gives them away somewhat in the shrouded nightmare that is Tulo 17's atmosphere.

Ed would do anything to hear some ABBA right about now.

After hanging back, trying to hear anything other than Gordon and Michaels shouting to coordinate their attacks and the wind and the shudder-inducing sound the bugs make when they run at their prey, he finally pinpoints the cluster of the people he assumes are sending the distress signal.

Hemmed in by a nasty-looking couple of bugs. Backed against the cave wall. Easy pickings, yet standing firm, a sizeable number. Small enough to fit on a shuttle.

Ed doesn’t let himself wonder whether they’ve been cut down in size. The closer he gets, the more frightened he becomes and, in a roundabout way, the more determined he feels. In the name of his job and doing what he loves, what he’s out here to do, Ed runs for them. In the name of the organization he can be disdainful of at times- when it comes down to it, though, the Union is designed to protect and save lives.

These people have obviously been stranded here for a long time. Clothing tattered and carrying a few of their injured. Ed hacks at the leg of one of the two unwavering bug to get its attention off of them and of the people, who have been wholly unaware of the shuttle and the Union officers until Ed dashes in front of them.

He raises his own saber alongside the one who must be the leader of their group. When he points in the direction of the shuttle and shouts for them to go, he hears cries of relief.

They must recognize the Union shuttle's build, or at least know that help has come.

It is a struggle to keep himself between the bugs and the group he's here to defend. Most of them Ed is able to identify as Bruidians and Navarians. An interesting combination, and Ed can't wait to ask if they crashed while on the same ship, or if they both happened to become stranded here by chance. He will have to wait until he gets the chance, provided they all make it out of here alive.

The leader, a female Bruidian, wields her own saber that looks centuries old, made out of a dark metal. A dotted bar of green light along its center gives it the power necessary to slice into the bugs' armored parts. It can’t make it all the way through, doesn’t poses the kind of iron-melting power Ed’s has. He curses himself for not bringing a spare, or spares, given that the rest of the party have no such weapons. They crowd behind Ed and the Bruidian woman- a third bug rounds on them.

To Ed’s astonishment, Michaels is hot on its trail. She steps up, as does the Bruidian leader, attacking it from both sides.

Ed takes his chance where he sees it, beginning to herd a part of the group towards the shuttle, urging them to move as fast as they can. And they do move fast- so fast that Ed has to dive and slide through the sand, hacking at an approaching bug's leg. It rounds on him. A good thing about his saber is its raw power. Sadly, that is also the worst thing about it. Its solid nature makes it hard to grip when whatever you’ve stabbed rips away from the pain you inflict, so he can only watch as his saber is yanked from his hand. He sees it fly a few meters, plowing into the sand handle-up.

He gets a mere moment of satisfaction, watching more than half of the stranded party disappear into the shuttle.

The bug bears down, stinger swaying as it sizes him up. Ed raises his hands, nothing else to fight it off with.

“Stand the fuck up, Captain!”

Out of nowhere, Michaels stands before him as he's accepting the reality of being stabbed and then chomped up by this bug. She roars, swings in time with the stinger striking downwards. A burst of green flood around them, stinger cleaved clean from the tail of the bug. He's almost on his saber when the bug's floundering agony lands a strike on Michaels, cutting her deep on the arm with its piercing mouth-sword and sending her tumbling into him. Not wasting a second, he stands them both up, twists, pushes her towards the shuttle.

She's still going in spite of the deep gash spanning her front, calling to the people who are running a line between the Bruidian and Ed and now Michaels as well, making a beeline for the shuttle. Ed is stuck, locked in with the bug coming back at him and Michaels with a vengeance, stingerless but tail still twitching, spilling the poison into the sand. He cuts one of the slicers off in a single slash, going for a leg on the same side where his last hack had been. The beastly bug falls forward where its leg used to be, and Ed is pushed back, has his shirt torn by the mandibles. They clack and burble, frothing and splattering him, the sizzling of the noxious spit eating away at the toughened fabric of his combat uniform. _Click click click_ , the bug snaps at him and tries to swipe him with its remaining slicer. Ed has to give up one of his hands holding the thing off, parrying it just in time, suffering a nick to the bloody, dissolving flesh of his left shoulder. The stinging sensation, he doesn’t allow himself to jolt at. One wrong move here will end him.

It swings itself around to stop him from attacking its vulnerable side, pushing down with the horrid, hairy pincers that make up its face. Up this close, the sockets where its eyes had once been are pulsing and moving beneath the gummy, rubber-thick skin. Shoving at it with one hand, the other trying to aim the saber down its armored exoskeleton, Ed sees movement over the top of the struggling bug's head.

Gordon's silhouette, stark and fast in a clearing of the air, standing tall between three, four pillars that mark the tails of the bugs he's facing down.

Ed watches, heart in his mouth, as a slicer crosses Gordon’s shadow, unable to tell if it was a hit or not.

"You'll be fine, right?!" He yells to Michaels, hoping that she caught it, because he's not going to waste a second.

"I got 'em," She had heard, and Ed is darting underneath the bug before she can shout, "go!"

He keeps his saber up, dragging it along the underside of the bug's thorax and abdomen, hears a _"hey, asshole"_ and the gurgling that indicates the foul fucker's death, Michaels successfully following up his attack.

It takes the few seconds of sprinting for Ed to realize in quick succession: _Gordon has not seen me use a saber, ever_ , and _I can’t believe I might survive this, damn_ it, and _Gordon knows why I studied the blade and I swear if I save his ass, he is not allowed to make fun of me for it,_ and then he reaches Gordon, hears the shout of frustration as Gordon swings at the boldest of his attackers.

For about half a minute, Ed is stuck taking down one of the four bugs without being able to alert Gordon that he has help. It’s only when the bug finally flops onto its back, legs curling in, that Ed gets to Gordon’s shoulder, assuming a back-to-back stance without another word.

The weight Gordon presses against Ed’s back is a wordless _thank you_ that goes both ways.

Gordon has taken his fight away from the shuttle, just like Ed had asked him to. The bugs who followed him are certainly not of the smaller variety, and are arguably the most relentless and bloodthirsty ones in this cave. And Ed, the top half of his uniform hanging open and a great glob of poison burning his left shoulder into a bloody, stinking mess- Ed rips his way through a second bug, and then a third, returning to Gordon's side when he spots a fresh hoard of bugs hanging in the shadows, clicking their slicers, assessing, ready to strike.

Going back to Gordon is good, on one hand. Safety in numbers- strength in numbers.

On the other hand-

"Verse me!!" Gordon shouts, the grin bright on his face, disbelief and excitement shining in the dark, as bright and vivacious as his saber when Ed gets a glance at him. The final bug in close proximity runs at them, and Ed stands side-by-side with Gordon, moving in sync, targeting its legs on both sides.

"Not the time!" Ed calls back, pushing through the resistance as his saber goes through one, two, all three of the bug's legs. Its legless body falls between them, the green-glowing back lighting Gordon's face from beneath. His raised saber casting one half with bright pink.

He's still smiling. It's _so_ _nearly_ enough to make Ed smile with him.

 _Nearly_ , for the bugs that had been hanging back seem to take the opening of free space and fallen kin, advancing in a loose semicircle on him and Gordon.

"But later!?" Gordon readies himself, copying Ed when he swings his sword in a few idle circles.

" _Yes_ , later!!"

"Awesome!!" And Ed does not know if Gordon is so enthusiastic because he’s watching Ed decapitate two bugs in a short flurry of swipes or if he's excited about sparring with Ed some time, but either way. The cat is well and truly out of the bag, Ed really needs to get rid of these new-arrival bugs, and they need to _get the fuck out of here_.

He needs to get all of the above done _without_ dying. And the fastest way to do that would be:

"Get the shuttle!"

"Everyone's on?!"

Ed doesn't respond, doesn't get the chance as a couple of bugs charge him. Always trusting, Gordon turns away and dashes for the shuttle. Holding them off, Ed hears the engine fire up. Sand and grit flies, concealing the bugs from view completely. Limbs and the swinging slicers are swung with deadly accuracy, and it's all Ed can do to parry and dodge until he feels the shuttle's engine blasting at his back. Ed runs, jumps on, the door sealing. Gordon begins to fly away.

His saber pack is hot, hissing when he powers down the blade and it flickers down into nothing. Unlatching his helmet, he finds his arm grabbed and held, wrist-to-elbow with the female Bruidian he had fought with. She says nothing, releases him after a moment of Ed holding onto her arm the same way she’d grabbed his. Michaels is on top of their first-aid, talking to the rescued Bruidians and Navarians in the very back. She takes care of the ones she can treat, leaves the rest for the medical team on the Orville.

When Ed is all but waved off by Michaels and the Bruidian leader, he slowly gets to the front. He watches through the window as they break the atmosphere.

“You wanted to _impress_ me?” Gordon asks, full-of-it.

“ _Yes_ , Gord-”

“Me?!”

“Gordon-”

“Ed, you already impress me, you stupid fuck.”

“I know, I know.”

“ _Do_ you? Jesus, Ed, _why_.” It isn’t a question, and yet Ed knows he should give Gordon an answer.

“By the time I was good enough-”

“ _Good enough_ , Jesus Christ-”

“I didn’t think it would’ve been as cool, anymore. To you. We knew each other, by then, and. Whatever.”

Gordon turns away from the front window, unbothered by the empty space between them and the Orville. He crosses his arms, glares. The classic _you’re being a dickhead and I want you to stop’_ , a Gordon trademark, only this has a playful spin. A slight smirk, as if Gordon knows Ed can’t help it. “Stop _looking_ at me like that, shut up.”

“I didn’t _say_ anythin’...” He sounds guilty, raises his hands and turns back to the front, pretending to busy himself with the dashboard.

“Shut _up_!”

“I’m not sayin’ anything! You wanted to impress me, and then you didn’t, and now you have, so! _You_ shut up!”

“No, you!”

“ _No_ , you!”

“ _No,_ you-”

Ed isn’t proud to say that they keep this up all through docking, make it through Kelly’s usual _“what the fuck did you do to yourself, Ed, go get cleaned up”_ by going back and forth under their breaths. Claire is the one to stop them, fussing at Ed’s shoulder and Michaels’s almost split-open midriff held together by a bled-through bandage she’d applied to herself on the flight back.

 

It isn’t until Ed is having his shoulder taped up, that he realizes he hadn’t thought of Kelly once. Not when he jumped in the path of a slicer meant for the lead Bruidian, not when he’d faced death and its frothy mandibles down. He’d stood, his back to Gordon’s, challenged more of the overgrown creepy-crawlies, and his thoughts didn’t drift to his ex-wife. Not for a second- he’d seen Gordon over the top of the bug that was sure to kill him, and he’d moved on instinct, just enough training to ensure Michaels knew she would be securing their targets by herself.

Michaels, sat beside him on the bed, is half-chatting with Claire as her arm and middle are plastered in rapid-heal gel, half-sleeping after their ordeal. Her combat uniform is around her waist, the blue lights dull and her matching blue singlet torn across the middle, same as Ed’s.

“Awful lot of blue for a Science Officer.” Ed mocks her.

Claire hits him on the knee with her PADD. He has no idea how she juggles all her equipment, how she managed to build up enough momentum to give his bare leg a little red mark. “Fuck!”

“Deserved that,” Michaels sneers, kicking his feet with hers, “you’re awfully fucking stupid, for a Command Officer.”

“Yeah, well _you’re_ stupid, for a Science-”

“Children.” Snaps Claire, whacking both Michaels and Ed, this time. Ed sees her pull her hit on Michaels’s leg. Michaels looks a little less close to death, so he considers it a win. “Ed, you’re welcome to get out of here any time you like. Take that tape off in three hours.”

“Yeah,” A new voice speaks, and Ed looks up so fast his neck clicks, “you comin’, Captain?”

Gordon. Leaning against the doorway, saber pack in hand. Smirking at Ed- the fucker had come away from the skirmish completely unscathed, held it over Michaels and Ed’s heads the entire way to medbay to get checked out by Claire. He’d been dismissed in a flash, had even fucking showered because he had the time. Just to _show off_ , he and Ed about to get sweaty and dirty all over again, without the deathly part of fighting with a saber.

Without the adrenaline, the lives-on-the-line occupying the majority of Ed’s mind, Ed’s quickly realizing that he doesn’t think sparring with Gordon was the cleverest call, after all. For here Gordon stands, cocky and his stupid smile on his stupid face lighting up Ed’s stupid life, a fact that haunts Ed’s waking and sleeping hours. He always finds it harder to keep these emotions in control when he’s fresh off a mission.

Ed would punch himself in the chest to get his heart back on the right rhythm, if it wouldn’t bring Claire down on him, wielding scanners and needles.

“And just what are you two doing?” Is her judgmental, no-look but spot-on assessment on Ed’s disobedience of the rules she gave him just now. “You better not do anything with that shoulder to mess up your scar tissue, Captain.”

Ed slides himself off of the bed, pulling a spare grey shirt on, wincing at the twinge in his shoulder. As he pulls his standard-issue pants up to cover the light dressing on the poison burns his thighs had suffered, he hears Gordon’s laugh:

“I’ll go easy on him, Doctor, don’t worry.”

“Like hell,” Ed is muttering. He grabs his belt and clips it to his waist, sends a wordless thanks to Claire and nod to Michaels, “I’ll kick your ass so hard, you won’t be able to sit right ‘till July.”

“Talk dirty to me more, Mister Mercer,” Gordon is saying, hitting him on the back as they leave the medbay together. The simulation suite isn’t far, and Ed sees Gordon speed up, feels himself revving up, trying to match. These kinds of words, Ed is more than used to, “it’ll be _that_ much more satisfying when I send you crawlin’ back to Claire.”

“Oh, you’re on.”

Simulator Three’s door opens for them: smiling and shoving one another as they bicker and threaten without real heat.

Ed throws an underhanded blow before they’ve even started a program, saber still on its way out of the pack as he slashes at Gordon’s left arm.

Gordon ducks and immediately charges him, bowling him backwards with a shoulder-barge. “Claire said _go easy_ , Malloy,” He chuckles, wheezing slightly. Taking all one-hundred-and-fifty-five pounds of _Gordon_ directly to the chest will do that to a person, with or without the speed at which he’d slammed Ed, “weren’t you gonna be gentle?”

“Fuck, son of a bitch,” Gordon slams his hand on the control panel, his grin and his laughter so alike to his usual behavior, Ed nearly forgets he’d just tried to cut off his arm, “do you ever _shut up_ \- Malloy backing-sim oh-nine-three.”

“What, no Justin?”

“Justin lives in this base program.” Is Gordon’s sassy, knowing response. “I can get _Justin_ , if you want.”

The walls become a jungle, the ground dirt underfoot. A scoreboard lights up partway up the wall above the closed door. Queen’s _Hammer to Fall_ booms.

Ed shakes his head. As much as Ed loves the Ogre, he’s not in the mood for a personality like Justin. Gordon, a snarly smile on his face, hovers his hand over the command, his words sounding to Ed like a test: “so, are we fighting each other, or are we fighting together?”

“You said you wanted to verse _me_ , so…” Ed answers, lazy, swirling his sword in one hand, circles that beam the red light of his saber.

_“~Here we stand, here we fall- history won’t care at all~”_

Gordon’s is a piercing pink with a yellow underline, swings in a dizzying blur of contrasting color as Gordon passes it, hand to hand, painting ovals and figure-eights in the air. He stops in a dramatic pose Ed has seen countless times but never faced down himself, “show-off.”

It would be intimidating, were it anyone but Gordon. Anyone but Gordon wielding that distinctly colored saber, anyone but Gordon armed and ready to fight him. Ed holds his saber point-down, tucks one leg behind the other and bows slightly. A motion Gordon snorts at:

“Who the fuck taught you, again?”

“Ngoc- remember, the bio-engineering-”

“Yeah, I remember her,” Gordon interrupts him, “but-”

No warning or sign beforehand, _“~you don’t waste no time at all~”_ Gordon lunges at Ed and almost whips his saber out of his hand with the force of the swing.

Ed takes three quick steps backward, Gordon advancing, each of his steps with another slash Ed blocks, floundering from the unexpectedness of the attack- “Forget everything she taught you, ‘cuz rule number one,” on Ed’s next block, Gordon tilts their sabers. Gets Ed’s off to the side to leave his front defenseless, and a flick of his wrist has his saber at the side of Ed’s neck- “your enemies won’t fuckin’ bow.”

There’s viciousness in it, not aimed at Ed, though Ed kind of likes it, an ugly little part of him wouldn’t mind having it aimed at him. Gordon looked normal, same old Gordon, whenever Ed had seen him in a sim and taking on holographic assailants.

Up this close, Ed spots the differences. This is Gordon, but not, really.

He doesn’t know how to describe it.

A beat, two, Ed breathing shallow and fast and Gordon’s saber burning on the skin where his neck meets his shoulder, and on the third beat, Ed sees his chance in the moment Gordon thinks he’s won, _“~close to you as to us all~”_

Gordon relaxes an inch.

Ed’s left foot plants firm on Gordon’s right. Doing little more than raising a knee to Gordon’s hip and shifting his weight against his side, he uses the butt of his saber to block the desperate swing that comes his way. A shout, shocked, followed by laughter, _“~we’re just waiting for the hammer to fall~”_ as Gordon lands face first in the dirt

“I’m not that _easy_.” Ed taunts, and Gordon is cackling, unable to string together a sentence, “no- rule number fucking _one_ , Gord: _never_ underestimate a man who fucking bows before he hands your ass to you on a plate!”

The red blocky numbers on the scoreboard shift in the corner of Ed’s eye, but he knows what it says, too busy staring down at Gordon, taking the hand he waves up for help, helping him to his feet. They step back, a couple of meters separating, Gordon still chuckling and throwing in a mocking bow for Ed.

_Ed: One, Gordon: Nil._

Ed doesn’t waste a second, _“~toe your line and play their game, let the anesthetic cover it all~”,_ hitting at Gordon relentlessly, struggling to keep his seriousness when he hears Gordon singing along under his breath, interfering with the swears he growls when Ed gets him on the run, every time Ed scores him with his saber, every time Ed’s point count goes up and up and Gordon’s stays at zero.

If Ed’s heart pounds louder each time Gordon lands on his back or his knees, Ed making a point to make it clear he’s won by aiming Gordon down with his saber- no one has to know. Ed doesn’t pay it any mind, _“~we just wanna scream it louder and louder and louder~”,_ accustom to the sensation. It means no harm, is no danger, means _nothing_.

“Shit, you’re good.” Gordon picks himself up when Ed reaches five wins.

“Sick of it?”

“Don’t tempt me.” And as Gordon fiddles with the control panel, back to Ed, “how about some co-op,” Ed rolls his shoulder out and let’s himself stare for a pathetic paragraph in time, a lapse in his iron rules. Gordon’s shout: _“let’s fight giant spiders!”_ going right over his head.

The metaphorical paragraph would go something like this:

Gordon has never been the biggest dude. He has an inch or two on Ed, but he’s less built, sharper features. If Ed had to pick a favorite- and he’s going to, for the sake of being weak and blowing off some of the steam he’s trapped up for fuck knows how long –it would be Gordon’s eyes. They give everything away. Easy to read, incapable of telling lies. Ed has had numerous instances where all he’d had to do was make eye-contact with Gordon, a check-over, _is this the wrong decision_ or _should I know something else before I act_. Wordless queries that get answers faster than words would convey, less room for doubt on Ed’s end. Because Gordon has never given Ed a reason to doubt him. The lies Gordon has told Ed are few and far between, were always in Gordon’s effort to cover up something he’d thought would make Ed unhappy, or upset, or angry with him, or even jealous. Understandable, practical, a white-lie to a situation-critical; Ed always knows Gordon had his best intentions behind his rare choice to lie to Ed.

But, really, _is_ there anything Gordon could do, to make Ed like him any less?

Conjuring a huge spider is, unsurprisingly, a huge turn-off for him.

A fucking tarantula the size of a car materializes between them.

Gordon’s words catch up with Ed, and Ed’s own stomach catches on his ribs when it tries to shove its way up his throat because of the fucking massive goddamn spider-

“Fuck fuck _fuck-_ Gord, fuck! No!”

“Hah, _gotcha_ ,” The spider glitches out, “you _are_ easy, Mercer, don’t lie to yourself.”

“That wasn’t funny!” Ed is on his ass in the dirt, his hands shaking. It wasn’t funny to him- Gordon got a kick out of it, and no one got hurt, and Ed knows his panic will ease off.

Maybe it was deserved, a work of karma, for letting himself go that miniscule amount.

He does what he’s always done. Laughs along, a quiet _“you asshole”,_ Gordon setting up a scenario for them to fight against, replying with his usual _“spiders aren’t scary, man! They’re cute!”_

_“Not when they’re the same size of us!”_

_“But then we can ride them in to battle!”_

_“Gordon, I will puke on you if you fucking dare!”_

_“Alright, alright, Glantis 4 it is, you big baby!”_

_“You’re a baby!”_

_“No, you!”_

 

 

 

**DAY 01**

***John LaMarr's Log Notes:***

***In Warp.***

 

"Of all the times you could'a figured this out, it was watchin' him slice dudes in half? Man, somethin's _wrong_ with you."

John needs a damn break. That's what he'd moved to engineering for, and although his shiny new Lieutenant Commander title gains him some respect from those around him, the people who _knew_ him before the promotion still treat him with the same disrespect.

That is, barging into his peaceful space and making a fuss about shit John couldn't give two fucks about.

After this most recent rescue on Tulo 17, Ed and Gordon had apparently gone off and sparred as soon as they’d been cleared by Claire, _"as promised",_ Gordon kept saying, bubbly, starry-eyed at the prospect of a new sparring partner. John has his sources.

Unfortunately, Gordon had realized, in the moment of Ed dealing the finishing kill to a boss-level enemy in their final simulation, that _Ed Mercer is in fact very attractive,_ and this revelation had him quite literally running, screaming, to John.

"They weren't _real_ \- John, c'mon, just-"

"Nuh-uh. I need better grounds to help your useless psycho ass on. You can’t waltz in here, say you like seeing him covered in chunks, and then go: in my defense, him killing people is _big sexy_! Are you hearin’ yourself, man?"

"John!" Gordon wheedles, stalking him around the main console for the engine, John in the process of looking everything over before fully clocking out. "But he's hot _without_ all the cuttin' people up stuff, dude! Is it _that_ wrong if watchin' him killing people made me realize it?"

" _Yeah_ , man." John pokes a few buttons, then turns and pokes Gordon in the chest to make his point: "it's. Messed. _Up_. The dude is smarter than you can fucking believe, sure. That’s sexy. And, now he could kick your ass in a heartbeat-”

“He _has_ kicked my ass in a heartbeat-” Gordon interjects, disgustingly dreamy.

“Yeah. _How._ The _fuck_ do you find that hot?!"

“So what, you’re smart but can’t kick ass and that makes you _more_ sexy?”

“I’m gonna-” John grabs at him and Gordon dances out of his reach. “Dude, all I’m saying, is. He kicks, like, ten asses, and you think _that’s_ the right straw to break the camel’s back? Time to ask a life-long friend out because he could turn me into finely-diced human fuckin’ _sashimi_!?”

All of John’s attempts are hopeless, Gordon remaining undeterred by John’s warnings:

"You'll help me, though, right, man?"

"Not a chance." John says, in the process of messaging Kelly to meet in his room for drinks and plans. He hears Gordon hiss a _"fuck yes",_ just catches the end of his victory self-high-fives. “You know she’s gonna be fuckin’ pissed too, right? You’re really gonna have to make an argument.”

“Kelly can’t stop me.”

John doesn’t know what he’s expressing right now, but it sure as hell does the trick, Gordon changing his tune: “well. She _can_ , but it’s more than what I _just_ saw. About. Liking Ed. And stuff.”

“Yeah. Alright, man.” And, shoving Gordon out first, he nods to his Beta shift counterpart and leaves the peace of the engineering sector. “We’ll see how it goes.”

“Oh, yeah-” Gordon walks backward, reaching out and pinching John’s arm through his shirt- “First of the month,” easing the sting with a harsh punch to the site.

“I’m gonna _fuckin’_ ,” John gives chase, Gordon running for the elevator, “flick-kick you so fuckin’ hard, see if I help you again! Motherfucker!”

The elevator door shuts before John catches up, Gordon’s _“guess you could say I’m too quick, see you later, man,”_ fading as the elevator carries him up to John’s deck.

 

 

 

**DAY 06**

***Claire Finn's Log Notes:***

***Outpost 66. Crew exchanges, Henry needs a new bowtie,**

**I need to get Henry a present to thank him for**

**rewriting a few parts of our report, so I will get**

**him a new bowtie. It’s perfect.**

**… I hope they have a shop that sells bowties at 66.***

 

Bolodon discs isn't the kind of thing Ed plays against real people. Computerized opponents or himself- those are his usual foes. The colors and whirling plates does wonders for Ed's headaches, surprisingly. Or, maybe not so surprisingly, as the ability to lose one’s self in the colorful palettes reduces real-life stress faster than any drink Ed has ever drank in his life.

Same goes for Tridimensional chess.

His PADD comes in handy there. Too small to run a full game of Bolodon, but perfect for a miniature Tridimensional chess hologram he can carry in his pocket. Sit down, allot a level of difficulty in the computer’s side, start playing. No fuss of booting up a desk and being confined to it for the duration of the game.

He can also leave the second player slot open for him to spin the PADD around, like he does right now, looking at the opposite point of view, playing against himself. The noises of the medbay float through the door and go mostly unnoticed, one side of Ed's game occupying a useful position on one of the attack plates, the other side having a strong defense and a scattered, predictable attack up the main tiers of the board.

Claire is tutting an injured Ensign into a coma. Henry Park is talking to himself very loudly about his test-tubes, his newest project. The whirring of machinery and a buzz and hum he’s come to love. It all fits together for a perfect balance between white noise and an external stimulus to block out, giving him better focus on the checkered boards that flicker, projected, glowing blue and white.

His shoulder that was burned through by the Tulo 17 bugs’ poison has long-since healed. Now, he nurses a long gash up the inside of his left leg, a gift from the inhabitants of a planet he and Bortus went down to on their last shift, scanning for dysonium. Wrapped in rapid-heal gel, he has it stuck out under the short table, settled back against a squishy grey couch. Distant from the medbay, not so distant that Claire can’t yell out to him to check that he’s still keeping off his leg.

Ed often hides out in the private laboratory, a joint room to Claire's office, even when he’s not injured and ordered into a so-called ‘grounded with supervision’ detainment. He is allowed to use it as a place to go for peace and quiet when he can't sleep off-shift. The habit of spending his free time in general in here was picked up quick, has grown only stronger, because Claire is remarkable and she has a lot of things he can learn about. When she has the time, of course.

She doesn't often have time to do her work in this lab, usually preoccupied with crew-members and their injuries or worries, or samples that are brought back from planet visits. Those usually make their way into her lab after a few working days and by affect turn into an easy-going lecture for Ed.

Waiting for Claire to finish an official analysis right now, sidetracked by this Ensign’s injury, Ed taps his foot and considers his next move. His mind is having a hard time winding down. Embracing the game has gotten more and more difficult, as Ed considers his hide-away tendency to be caused by Gordon’s growing presence in his life, over the past week.

That is exactly what Ed is here to _not_ think about- injury aside –so he blocks it out, grapples with it, and as he's going for the white bishop, he is so caught up that he startles, Isaac walking into the room with purpose. It is very likely that Isaac doesn't have a purpose to walk with right now, although that is simply the way a Kaylon walks.

"Hey, Isaac." Ed says, slowly, and just as slowly moving his white bishop to a spot right between the black queen and a pawn. A trap. He has no idea how he's going out get out of that one, but it is exciting. He spins the PADD one-eighty.

"Hello, Captain." Isaac replies after a beat, probably trying to understand the logic behind Ed playing the game against himself.

And then, completely left of field, Isaac follows up his greeting with: "that is a good game."

Thinking he misheard, Ed looks up to see Isaac watching him, no longer displaying his 'scanning' body language. If anything, Isaac appears to be relaxed.

"Yeah. It sure is." Reaching to pause the timer, Ed wonders who introduced Isaac to the game- who would be willing to take a Kaylon on in a game of chess. Who would be stupid enough to do that, Ed has no idea. There's no way to win against someone like Isaac. Able to calculate all possible outcomes and likelihoods of those outcomes in mere milliseconds- a human wouldn't stand a chance against him. Isaac looks unassuming, gentle, standing still in the doorway to the lab. Ed knows better.

Isaac has a competitive side- a Kaylon would never admit it -especially when it comes to Bolodon against Claire's kids. They certainly give Isaac a run for his computer processing capabilities, Ed's seen it firsthand.

But surely, Isaac isn't here to discuss games. "What can I do for you, Isaac?"

"Would you be interested in versing me, one day, Captain?"

Ed blinks.

He, obviously, seems to be stupid enough to take on a Kaylon in a game of chess, replying in a heartbeat:

"Why does everyone want to fight me, but okay. Sure, Isaac. How's sixteen-hundred?"

"I believe I do not have anything on at that time."

"Alright. Schedule in a session of kicking my ass."

"I can do that if you prefer."

Isaac turns and walks out of the room, and Ed groans, rubbing his face and hitting the PADD to continue the timer.

"Teaching you humor was a mistake." He mutters, thinks he hears a creaky noise coming from Claire's office- the sound they as a collective crew have learnt as Isaac’s imitation of laughter, to express his amusement. “This is all your fault, Claire.”

“I heard that,” She shouts back at him, “you better be sitting down!”

 

Ed stands before the Finn's quarters at one minute to sixteen-hundred, engrossed by his message chain with Gordon about the merits of keeping alien bees on a Union vessel: _'no, Gordon, I refuse to let you keep alien bees on my ship'_. Gordon’s reply is a mistake riddled short-essay outlining a better use for Deck F’s currently useless recreation room. The better use: turning it into a bee keeping habitat. At sixteen-hundred on the dot, _'I have shit to do but we are not done here,'_ the door in front of him slides open, a frazzled-looking Claire bustling out into the hall.

"Oh, Ed!" She jumps back, a second short of bowling Ed off of his feet. "Henry's made headway with his research but Isaac said you'd be by- go on in, I'll be back in a few hours."

A smile through her obvious agitation, and she waves and whispers a quick _"bye-bye,"_ hurrying down the hallway, head buried in her PADD. He waves her off, making sure to not keep her from her job. They share a strong understanding, in that way, where the work they do ranks high in their lives. Work seems to bother her more when he’s put on her unexpectedly. And for good reason too, Ed thinks- Claire has much more going on in her life, than he does. He admires her greatly.

It isn't until she's turned a corner and the door hisses, ready to close, that Ed steps through.

Ty and Marcus are playing a video game Ed recognizes, knows Gordon enjoys- the only one he never fails to beat Ed at -on their PADDs. They take up the couch and occasionally jump off, running around the low table or jumping onto the second couch or laying on the floor, shouting _"unfair,"_ and _"you're cheating!"_

Isaac is already sat at the table, the computer built into it on, an untouched game of Tridimensional chess running. The boards are far bigger than what the PADD generates, the pieces far easier to touch and move. Highest end at where Isaac sits- giving Ed an obvious advantage -they get to their game as soon as Ed sits down, chattering about the going-ons of the ship. Kaylon aren't great at holding a casual conversation. Ed will admit, he is far better than when they'd first met. Most of that is probably thanks to Claire and her boys.

They drift topic to topic, often centralizing on the oddness of human nature, as Ed does when talking to Isaac, who is only curious to learn more. Minutes pass, the game slow to start and picking up its pace when Isaac takes an attacking method, Ed adeptly turning it onto its head, and Isaac using very standard counter-measures to Ed's own counter. Their game is ridiculously engaging.

Thankfully, it isn't _just_ Ed who sometimes misses a question or trails off mid-answer.

 _"Suck it, loser!"_ Marcus is yelling at Ty, getting laughter in return.

"I did not know the Lieutenant felt such a way," Isaac is remarking on his and Ed's own conversation, their volumes markedly lower than the boys, "that would not be a partnership I would anticipate. Lieutenant Dann does not appear to me as the type, and ensign Roue is. He does not seem compatible."

"Of course not, Isaac." In the middle of a move, Ed decides to change tactics and heads for the moveable board on the side of Isaac's pieces, where his defense is the thickest. Once he's set the piece down and swapped the timer to Isaac's turn, he returns to their conversation. "Any biological with less of a handle on their emotions can be unpredictable, in that way."

“Yes…”

Isaac's return move takes a couple of seconds longer than normal, and the moment he flips the digital timer, Ed’s brain go into double-time.

"You should know that by now." Ed states, softly, absently as he analyses what Isaac's move means for his pawns, his distraction strategy. He's figured out his next move a moment later, asking as he completes it: "you've been confounded by things Claire has done in the past, right?"

Isaac watches him move his white knight to replace one of Isaac's outer-most pawns on the highest board.

Ed flips the timer.

Then, nothing.

 _"Move, you bastard!"_ Is Marcus's strangely well-timed shout, a few _thumps_ as he hits Ty with a pillow, the flying harms and pillows catching Ed's attention from the game in front of him.

Isaac watches the board, scanning and seeing in his own Kaylon way. Seconds pass, ten seconds, reaching half a minute and officially the longest time Isaac has taken to make his conclusion. "Isaac?" Ed prompts him, and Isaac answers then.

"Doctor Fin has-"

"No doctors in the house!" Ty yells at Isaac, jumping to his feet, leaning over the back of the couch in order to be as loud as possible. "Oh-" and his eyes lighten, as he recognizes Ed, going on at much the same volume- "hi, Mister Mercer!"

"Oh!" Marcus pipes up, popping his head over the couch back too, his own quick greeting at a thankfully much lower sound level. "Sup, Cap'n."

Isaac turns his head towards Ty and Marcus, a motion he should not need to do but does anyway, for the sake of expressing himself through human body language.

"Apologies, young Ty."

Ty giggles, flops back onto the couch, dragging Marcus with him. The button mashing continues, and Isaac gets to continue his sentence.

"Claire has," he restarts, as the 'no doctors in the house' rule must be one that applies solely to Isaac and his penchant to referring to people by their job titles or rankings, "on multiple occasions, caused me to re-evaluate the way I perceive humans. However, I have often found that those observations particular to her are a result of purely individual difference."

He has obviously forgotten or fails to notice that his head is still turned towards the boys. Ed is struck by the instinct to reach out and turn it back towards the game, lets his logic take precedence instead. Kaylon can sense their surroundings no matter which way their heads face.

"Okay, sure," Ed has to prompt again when Isaac has made his move, is yet to flip the timer, "but that's being human, isn't it? Individual difference? It’s a big step away from being a Kaylon, and, Isaac..."

A short tap on the table brings Isaac's attention to the little console- sadly, isn't enough to bring his head to its normal position -and Ed's turn begins. The numbers reverting to zero, Isaac's long turn banking up and comparing to his previous turns, “I think you’ve noticed. Just, how human you’re starting to behave and think.”

Luckily, Ed has been given plenty of time to plan for Isaac's possibilities. The timer flips back to Isaac in a mere five seconds, Isaac's black knight flickering out of existence, Ed's white queen taking its place.

 _"Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!"_ Ty shouts, kicking at the air, his pink socks flailing, distracting in Ed's periphery.

Isaac is quicker in his analysis this time, but hesitates before turning the timer over once again. Two more moves pass between them, their conversation coming to a halt as Ed seems to confound Isaac, and Isaac's moves are increasingly defensive, causing Ed to work harder and harder.

At Ed's most recent move, Isaac freezes. Ed is not exaggerating- he swears, Isaac's hand comes up, extends towards the board somewhat, then stops dead. A moment, and:

"Captain."

"Yes?" Ed murmurs, preoccupied by calculations, his gaze on the attack plates, on what he's got flanking Isaac, the figurative hole he's blasted in Isaac's forward defenses.

The pause Isaac does this time is nearly an audible _'dot dot dot'_. His moment of analyses passing and his move made, he's pressing the timer, and:

"Checkmate." Ed says before he even finishes his move, surprised with himself.

Isaac leans back in his chair, the board freezing, the whole thing going Ed's color to display his victory, a bright white and yellow and gold.

"You defeated me."

"I did, huh."

"Captain."

Isaac's head finally turns back to face Ed. "I believe I am at what Claire calls a 'loss for words'."

"Play again?"

"Of course."

Ed doesn’t know whether Isaac can change the shape of his eye lights or not, but he swears they narrow with determination. "It should be impossible for me to be defeated by you a second time."

 

When Claire returns, Isaac tells her that they've played six rounds in addition to their first one, and Isaac is yet to beat Ed once.

Isaac sounds proud, if a Kaylon ever could.

Claire tells Kelly over wine that night, who tells Gordon at breakfast, who laughs at Ed the next time he sees him for being a nerd, _“how the fuck do you beat a Kaylon in a game of math and logic? Were you fucking possessed? You freak.”_ This happens to be when Ed walks onto the bridge for the start of their shift, and everyone wants to hear the story, having to go through Isaac when Ed buries his face in his hands and quietly begs Gordon to go to quantum.

It's the one thing Ed had hoped to avoid but go figure. His worst moments tend to happen the second he steps foot on the bridge, and are often because of Gordon Malloy.

Sometimes it isn’t even because Gordon is doing or saying something incriminating, annoying, endearing. Sometimes, it’s just because Gordon is there.

Ed doesn’t think about it.

 

 

 

**DAY 09**

***Captain Mercer's Log Notes:***

***Yasha System. New Life, new civilisations.***

 

In the absence of Kelly’s influence, Ed finds it hard to drink alcohol in the presence of others.

Especially when the goal is to get as trashed as possible.

 _Especially_ if his drinking buddy is distinctly _not_ human and has very different tastes in drink- the kind that knocks Ed off-kilter after a few sips.

Bortus and Ed are drunk as skunks, locked away in the less-frequented Simulator Five by a Captains code only able to be overridden by a high-ranking medical officer. Bortus, polishing off the bottle Ed had taken his mandatory three-to-four sips of, lets out a loud belch mid-sentence. Ed, who is now ready to puke and-or cry, fears he’s about to do both at the smell of the liquor. He can barely register how close he and Bortus have become in the simulator, on the floor of a plain-looking bar that is vacant other than them. The music goes in one ear and out as well, his focus as pinpointed as it can be on Bortus’s story of his afternoon. A terrible, dastardly tale that led him to messaging Ed the _‘captain. sim five for drinks?’_ and Ed’s resigned _‘okay : >’_ back.

He gets the gist, hopes he’s followed the main plot: an argument with Klyden, a slight at Heveena and the women living in the Llop nebula, the whole situation rubbing Klyden the wrong way. Bortus stands by his comment, _“if our child remained as he was, perhaps you would feel differently,”_ even if it had landed him in the ‘dog-house’. Ed’s about to comment on the terrible double-standard he’s seen Klyden hold Bortus to, wants to empathize with him.

Opening his mouth brings out a burp of his own and he snaps it shut in a hurry, worried that substances a little more solid than air might come out.

“He is not sensitive to my complaints, Captain, and that did not used to bother me so much, but now- it is- it has been _eight years_ since our mating…” Bortus, swaying and drunk as he is, makes a very good point. It could be because he throws the empty bottle at a wall. Ed is shocked by the loud and sudden sound, punctuating his statement _just so_ that Ed is inclined to agree anyway. “You are a sensitive man, Captain, perhaps-” a hiccup interrupts Bortus this time, his drunkenness apparently not enough to have him drop Ed’s title- “perhaps you could help me. Again…”

“No, it’s- I’d love to,” Ed’s words find him, at the dejected end Bortus seems to go off on. Out-of-it Ed may be, he still recognizes that an emotional- very intensely emotional –Bortus is a rare and incredible sight, “but. Considering our combined experiences with feelings, and. _Marriage_ -”

“Hah!” Bortus’s laugh is more of a shout, a bark, a whole bag of feeling behind it Ed can’t begin to unpack, yet feels in his soul. “We do have that in common. _Terrible husbands_.”

The way he says it doesn’t sound like Bortus’s usual manner.

Ed wonders how often Bortus has heard those words from Klyden.

“We could start a club, Bort.” It’s said more to himself than to Bortus, but Ed gets another laugh and a heavy palm on his shoulder.

“We should.” Bortus says, all serious. “It would be a good bonding exercise.”

“Who are you, Doctor Finn?” Ed chuckles, patting at Bortus’s hand. As much as he loves touchy-feely Bortus, the stench of the karuum is a little much for his poor, drained brain.

At least they aren’t drinking oppsada. Karrum is thick, syrupy and bitter. It goes right to Ed’s blood, to his head, each sip hitting in over at least two standard drinks. The drink may be sickly, but that’s how Ed feels. Plus, Ed doesn’t know how to feel about growing a parasite inside himself, no matter how good Bortus keeps saying it feels. So he’ll pass on the oppsada, if Bortus decides that tonight is a night worthy of breaking it out.

“It is a _very_ good idea. As was this simulation- you are full of good ideas.” Bortus is telling him, and his nausea hits a clog, wells up at the words more than any of the liquor, for some reason. Ed knows the reason.

He does not expect Bortus to come out and say it, the supposedly unperceptive Moclan getting him spot-on: “you are resistant to praise, Captain. And you are sensitive to criticism.”

“I’m not used to it.” He says, plainly as he can, hopefully Bortus will drop it.

At that, Bortus snorts, and Ed tries not to frown- hears the words _“Union Point”_ under Bortus’s breath. That makes more sense, to Ed. The laughing, and disbelief. The assumption that because Ed kept to his studies for the grades, for the ability to excel in his career, he only received positive attention from others; his peers, or otherwise. He doesn’t mean to sulk, to sound angrier than he truly is, but alcohol can do that to people, as can crippling self-doubt.

Bortus is a little taken aback, when Ed retorts: “I’m used to being patronized through praise- was always this, fuckin’, ‘you think you’re better that me’ sarcastic shit. Like- like, Isaac, but meaning to be mean. Like, Klyden saying you’re a _good_ husband, but he’s actually angry- _hah_. Kelly used to do that all the time…” Bortus blinks at Ed, the processing he’s doing a very apparent set of stages that cross over his face.

Confusion, understanding, confusion again, and frustration. Ed is about to apologize, is cut off by Bortus’s very loud:

“That is- how did Malloy say it?” He speaks brasher than he probably hears himself to be, and Ed watches him go very serious and stony for a long moment. He waits, wanting to steer their chatter but with no idea how speaking works until he starts moving his lips. A sign of how much of an impact the karrum has had. “ _Ah_ ,” the answer comes to Bortus. To Ed’s shock he brings another bottle of karrum out from behind his back. Spinning the cap off, holding Ed’s gaze, Bortus says, expressionless, “that is fucked up,” and the conversation appears to have ended.

“Sure is, man.” Ed allows himself to take the bottle, sip from it, pass it back. Bortus takes several gulps of it. Ed wonders if Bortus even feels the burn, the warmth of it sitting in his stomach. It goes down hot, tastes stronger than gasoline smells. Its affects are able to be felt on the inside, Ed swears, prays it isn’t another parasite-growing drink and Bortus has neglected to tell him the whole time since they started drinking together. The worming sensation through his veins as it rushes to the head doesn’t ease this sudden paranoia, even if it sets him into a weighed-down state. Better than lying in bed or held in a tight hug, far better than an anxious pressure and arguably better than the crushing of depression.

He trusts that Bortus isn’t letting him grow little bugs that might kill him, drinks again when Bortus passes it.

Drinking. Ed always wondered why Kelly drank so much, as it’s never been something Ed would do for fun, for socialization.

He used to drink with Gordon at Union Point when their assessments became too much. When they needed a space to blow off steam, to complain to an ear that would be open to it. Share the woes, the burdens, and complain back and forth until they were blasted, their problems running as dry as their glasses. From there, meeting for a beer or two became habit. It was more to talk about school, the Union, the space they wanted to get out to and explore already.

It was always just for the two of them.

Other than Gordon, Kelly was the one who dragged him into the world of social drinking. Arguably, she was the one who pushed him farther and farther away from it. All the times she had to manage him because he couldn’t handle his liquor, because he could become so morose after a certain number of drinks.

She’d practically force him out of the house, he’d drink, and she would complain about the outcome of the many reasons why he _doesn’t drink in the first place_.

Not listening to one another- although she holds so much of it over his head, he has his share of damage.

He’d never been able to convince her of his distaste towards drinking. Still hasn’t.

“Marriage is fucked.” Bortus speaks up suddenly. Ed wonders how long they’d both gone quiet. The bottle is out of his hand, down to the halfway point and sloshing in Bortus’s grip. He wonders if Moclans can throw up, seems to have forgotten most things he’d know if he weren’t seventy-percent alcohol instead of water.

“Yeah, fuck marriage.” He agrees, toasts an imaginary glass to it, and when Bortus puts the bottle in his hand, he take a double sip. “You guys are doing it wrong. At this point, I’d pay Kelly to kill me.”

Bortus chuckles. Ed sips a third time.

He hopes he doesn’t have a problem. He should probably ask Claire. She could tell him.

She knows so many things.

Ed, about to get lost on the ‘how great is Claire Finn’ train of thought, stops short at the comms system’s distinct beeping pattern.

They’re getting a call.

Ed curses, staggering to his feet and making his way to the wall panel by the door, begging for it to not be any sort of emergency, seeing as he can’t walk a straight line and the answer button appears to have multiplied and his mind is that bad paper mache project he’d done in grade five, getting his first and only C in his life.

Fucking art class.

The caller designation comes clear after a few squints and eye-rubs.

Once he gets a look at who it is, he kind of wishes it _was_ an emergency.

He kind of wishes he could pay Kelly to kill him and get away with it.

But we don’t always get what we want, do we.

“Oh, shit.” He says, numbly, no idea what to do.

“It is not Kelly, is it?” Bortus’s slurred question is followed up by another crack of glass breaking. Another burp. Ed curses under his breath again.

“No, Bort. _Worse_.” And he needn’t say more.

Bortus plants his face firmly into the floor, groaning what Ed thinks is a muffled _“I am not answering it, tell him to go away.”_

Only doing as he’s told, Ed connects the call.

 _"Bortus!"_ Klyden’s mean shout sounds terribly close through the tinny comms. Ed nearly steps back from the speaker, has to remind himself that Klyden isn’t _actually here_ yelling in his face. " _Where are you! Family dinner was supposed to start ten minutes ago!"_

Ed does a very quick, very drunk count of the pros and cons at his disposal.

There aren’t many of either:

One con: Bortus is clearly too wasted to talk to his shitty husband.

Two cons: Ed is too pissed, in both senses of the word, to talk to Bortus’s shitty husband _for_ Bortus.

One pro: if Ed thinks he can do at least one thing right while plastered, it is impressions and impersonations.

Two pros: Ed might not be _too_ pissed, in both senses of the word, to talk to Bortus’s shitty husband _as Bortus._

As soon as he comes up with the last item, it’s hard to think of any other way out of their situation.

Besides, Ed made the New Year’s resolution to be more optimistic. Pros it is.

"Uh..." Ed begins, stops and coughs, hits his throat a couple of times. And, in the best Bortus impression he can manage while bitch-ass shit-faced, he responds: "the Captain requested-"

From the floor, Bortus begins to laugh so hard he sounds like he pukes a little. Quickly, Ed mutes the call.

Klyden’s angered huffing goes inaudible under Bortus’s- and now Ed’s -cackling. Both struggling to breathe, Ed falling to his hands and knees, clutching his stomach so his ass is in the air and his face, like Bortus, is pressed to the ground. " _Oh my fuckin'_ ," he wheezes, trying to get it together, "oh my _God_!" Bortus has resorted to high pitched, pained sounds, keening and curled up on his side, hugging his knees. Just looking at him sets Ed off anew.

 _"Bortus! Where did you go!"_ Klyden is snarling, fierce and murderous, and Ed mutters _“okay,”_ over and over to himself. He gathers up every ounce of self-control he has left. Using the wall, he struggles until his feet are under him, legs shaking, whole body shaking to repress his laughter.

"Sh, _sh, sh_ ," He’s hushing Bortus, who has barely complied by the time Ed finds the unmute button, has his voice under control, "Klyden."

Snorts and a heaving sigh from Bortus to calm himself. Ed pinches his nose as hard as he can, releasing it to go on. "The Captain has requested my assistance-" more snorting. Bortus lets out a little crying noise. More shushes from Ed. Whether it’s how spot on Ed’s impression is or the fact that they’re doing this _at all_ , neither of them can keep it down for more than a few seconds. "It is on a matter we cannot leave unattended-"

Ed resorts to deep-breathing exercises away from the receiver and Bortus covers his mouth with both hands in an attempt to keep quiet. "I am afraid I will have to miss dinner with you and Topa."

_"Fine."_

Klyden’s shortness doesn’t even sober Bortus up- if anything, his attempts at stifling his laughter weaken. _"See if I care. I will see you tomorrow, do not bother returning to our quarters tonight."_

The call disconnects instantly and Ed falls down all over again, him and Bortus howling.

"I have _never_ heard him so upset!"

Ed has never seen such a strong emotion on Bortus’s face. It’s hard to tell where the pain and anger sits, under the amusement, the happiness, but Ed knows it must be there somewhere. "I should feel bad, but I do not!"

"The dude stabbed you, I’m not shocked!" He says, instead of asking about feelings again. "All aboard the 'fuck marriage' group."

"Yes- the _fuck marriage_ group." Bortus giggles, makes a very hilarious attempt at sitting up. Ed rolls onto his back so they’re closer together, both lying so they can see the roof of the simulated bar. “That was an impressive imitation.”

“That was an impressive imitation.” Ed copies him, looks on as something soft courses across his heart at the sight of Bortus, full-on laughing, eyes closed, not showing a worry or wearing an inch of stress.

And, sure, he’s completely blasted off his face. But everyone should have a good laugh from time to time.

Ed had relied on his ability to make up or copy voices to impress Kelly’s friends on a night out. They’d become a staple of his repertoire of getting laughs to cover his awkwardness, his discomfort at being out drinking, never mind that it was late at night and he’d rather be in bed reading.

From there, it had become a down-time, alone-time sort of thing he’d do for himself, his own entertainment. And, on the occasional bad fight, a way to piss Kelly off _just_ _so_ that she ended the fight by either storming out or shutting up.

It hadn’t even occurred to him that he could use it for honest entertainment, and not as a way to weasel into people’s good graces or find an end to an argument without cooperating to resolve it.

“Can you do Isaac?”

He’ll have to remember to tow Bortus back to his quarters. There’s no way he can send Bortus back to Klyden in this state, especially after the stunt they’d just pulled.

For now, Ed is happy to run through all of their Alpha shift crew, a few characters from video games Bortus plays that Ed has been introduced to by Gordon, a number of Admirals and other higher-ups.

Understandably, Ed’s Klyden impression gets the best response.

 

“Captain.”

During their following shift, an uneventful cruise through an unexplored planet system close to the Galactic Centre, Ed doesn’t expect Bortus to bring up a question for him. Considering the peace, he’d assumed Bortus would help Talla with her regulatory checks, as he usually does.

But here he is, chair spinning to face Ed’s.

“Yeah, Bortus?”

“Could you show Talla your impression of her?”

“… What?”

“She does not believe me.”

How much Bortus told Talla, Ed fears to know. If something is said to Talla, it usually ends up with Kelly or, worse, Claire. Given that Ed said _a lot of things_ in drunken confidence and Bortus’s memory is good enough to recall even a fraction of it, it’s just about enough to send him into a breakdown on the spot.

“Captain,” he doesn’t put a lot effort into it at first, but Talla is sitting up straighter, a slow smile spreading across her face, and Ed gets into it, “do you want me to open this jar of pickles for you?”

Gordon cackles without looking up from his dash, clapping and demanding Ed do one of Bortus. As Bortus lets Gordon know the events of last night in blessedly little detail, Gordon’s chair swings while he laughs, and a stupid part of Ed hopes it’s going to turn and Gordon will look at him instead of his work.

“Can you do one of me?” Isaac has piped up, and Gordon, same as everyone else on the bridge, give him all their attention.

So, Ed does it.

“I do not understand. Why would she call me a ‘bird-brain’ when I am the far superior lifeform? The Kaylon will kill all birds in the universe. Then, Doctor Finn will no longer be able to confuse me with her metaphors. I am very intelligent. Beep boop.”

“That is… Accurate.” Isaac says- when Ed echoes Isaac’s words back to him, everyone laughs.

Talla’s screeching of _“when did Claire call him that?! I have to call her”_ and Gordon’s _“again, again”_ bring out a warmth in Ed’s heart he tends to miss. Doesn’t know where it goes, some days, when days are often unpredictable and heart-hardening, out here in deep space.

“What about me?” Kelly asks.

It’s a wash of ice on his left side.

Panic, heart-stopping adoration, contentedness, and shame. Like four comically fast slaps to the face.

So much for an uneventful shift.

He doesn’t dare turn to her, her tone giving away only friendliness but Ed has learnt to not trust her motive by that alone. Not that Kelly is an intentionally unkind person. Ed had thought that once upon a time, though time taught him that she’d used that tactic of baiting him into a conversation because the straight-forward confrontation stopped working.

Now’s not the time for the tried and tired dissection of their marriage and the way it skews how Ed perceives everyone’s words or comments or questions. He does enough of that with Claire.

She either knows exactly what she’s doing, or is assuming the difference in their current relationship would make this more appropriate. But Ed holds on to the rude, cold, dismissive person he used to be, in their relationship. He clings to it as a reminder to never become that person again.

“Okay, back to work. You can prod me like a dancing monkey when we’re off the clock.”

She leans over and thumps him on the shoulder and he shrugs her off, a quiet: “what? You’ve heard my _Kelly Greyson_ enough times.”

She leaves her response unspoken, doesn’t push it. He’s thankful, despite seeing the lecture he’ll get the second they’re left alone together.

After all, Ed finds it hard to let things go, and they both know it well. At least she respects that, nowadays.

 

 

 

**DAY 13**

***Talla’s Log Notes:***

***He’s at it again. Why did Kelly make me go on the Ed Hunt.**

**Next time, I’m making Isaac do it.**

**We are giving a wide berth to a black hole. John is trying to analyze it.**

**Gordon has taken over for the Beta Helmsman and is trying**

**to get as close to it as he can without getting shouted at**

**by Tari, the Beta Captain. Apparently he’s not doing well.**

**Roue is coming up with names for it with the standby Navigator.**

**Isaac is running tests. Which is why I drew the short straw.**

**I swear, we spend half our time off looking for Ed.**

**I’ll give it to him, though. When he doesn’t want to be found,**

**it is really hard to find him.***

 

_“~Taller than the tallest trees… That’s how it’s got to feel…_

_“Deeper than the deep blue seas- that’s how deep it grows, if it’s real…~”_

Piano rings out through Deck F, accompanied by a loud yet soft, shy yet strong voice.

_“~When somebody needs you it’s no good unless he needs you… All the way…_

_“Through the good or lean years and for all the in-between years…~”_ the short riff on higher keys lights the way, a longer pause than one would expect between the lyrics, _“~come what may…~”_

The black, grand piano doesn’t look holographic. The technology has come a long way, and to one with a trained eye for these things it’s easy to tell how fake it is. Each sound drawn from it is tuned but not perfectly so, enough to emulate an older, authentic character. The lid is fully up. No sheet music on the propped-up holder, white keys outstanding.

Golden light lines the black hole outside the ship, its darkness and lightness both hitting the piano’s lid, striking through its middle and sending a twinkle to the roof of the recreational room on Deck F. About the size of the mess hall, void of furniture, the projection of light shimmers over almost half of the ceiling. In a romantic world, images could be drawn with the colors on the ceiling, driven by the music that comes out of his hands, from his singing:

_“~Who knows, where the road could lead us, only a fool would say…~”_

His voice carries flawlessly, the room catching, reverberating, boosting his tune so well, the walls seem to sing along. An alive and filled room that is un-lived in, for a ship holding three hundred people. And only one man in the middle of it, his back to the door, fingers playing over the keys in brushes she can see, sometimes are hidden by his body.

Being a Xelayan, Talla doesn’t know much about humanity’s history. Every time Ed or Kelly go off chatting about ‘the classics’, she tends to zone out.

Everyone and anyone on the Orville- yes, even Bortus –seems interested in what they have to say about their race’s history, be it wars or social change or evolution or music. Music and pop culture are the most popular. The recent hits from Earth play on most parts of the ship, and to Talla, it is unbearable. Where humanity is at now, that is. Who knows what they’re calling their style; a rebranding of an old-brand that comes together in a flashy, over-done way, in her opinion. Therefore, whenever a human, or any alien for that matter, starts up a conversation about human cultures, she will keep out of it. Pretend to switch her ears off and perform remote sweeps of the Orville’s systems just for something else to do, walk away if she’s off-shift.

So it is mystifying to her that, down here on Deck F and as far from the general crew of the Orville as possible, she can’t seem to do anything but stand in the doorway, listening to Ed sing:

_“~But if you let me love you, it’s for sure I’m gonna love you, all the way…_

_“All the way…~”_

Talla had been following the outer edge of the ship, taking her time to enjoy the view of the black hole on her hunt for the missing Captain. Deck F’s rec room was last on her list, other areas of the ship preferred over it, for its isolated location.

She can see the appeal, for Ed.

In a loose orbit that isn’t programmed, the Orville tilts and is drawn closer to the rift. The music rises, and Ed shines in the light of the black hole. She can practically hear the brass band and the choir, an instrumental taking over his singing voice and Ed himself moving more and more with the music, bringing on a new quality of story-telling. Starting with his head and shoulders as he had been doing before, he now sways from side to side to the bars that carry the melody and drumless beats. Every now and then leaning back, then leaning over the piano. Not getting louder, Talla wouldn’t call it loudness, rather a strengthened sound. Confidence, not complexity.

The plodding tempo of the song is similar to what one would hear in the background of a family restaurant, a performance at a conversational club. A song to listen to in the relaxed daybreak air before a shift of work, to clink glasses over and wind down to. And yet, Ed brings it out, puts himself into the song as if bringing breakfast to bed for a loved one is an epic adventure.

Talla cannot tell if the tune is wistful and hoping, or longing and lonely. Whichever it may be, there is a wanting to it. His relationship with Kelly- Talla can hear it, peaceably mourning what was, what they could have had.

Talla, for all her toughness, is soft at heart.

She can’t bear to hear it- for herself, and Kelly, and for Ed as well.

_“Who knows, where the road-”_

“Captain?”

She interrupts. A splatter of notes ruin the atmosphere as Ed fucks up, turning to the door in a flash.

“Talla!” His voice is croaky. Face reddening, he starts standing, closing the keys out-of-sight by dropping the fallboard of the piano with one hand: “what can I- _fuck-_ ”

The fallboard slams on the fingers of his other hand, still resting on the keys- “shit, what can I do for you,” subtly, he is turning, half-sat on the piano stool. An attempt to appear as if he wasn’t playing even though she is right there, talking in a rush, “why are you down here?”

“Looking for you.” She answers him simply, shrugging, not wanting to move any closer in case he leaves the piano entirely. “Shouldn’t I be asking you what _you’re_ doing down here, Captain?”

He wrings his hands together, lacing his fingers and she can just make out a few pops as he cracks his knuckles. Smile thin, wobbling and falling back to a neutral, unreadable expression.

“I was looking for some peace and quiet. That’s not illegal, is it?”

“On this ship?” She tries to joke again, and is met with another tight smile. “What were you playing?”

Ed blinks. Frowns.

“Mancini.”

“Yeah?” She gets a nod, sees color fill his cheeks, little else. “Doesn’t sound new.”

“No, he was before this millennia.”

“Wow- _old_ old.” To that, Ed nods again. Opens his mouth to speak, stops himself and frowns some more. Talla is half thinking it’s cute, half cursing him for being so awkward. “Do you know much of his stuff?”

Seemingly unable to speak, not willing to answer any of her questions, he nods once more. She watches his fingers twitch. A familiar tick she’s seen him do on the bridge, at dinner, during meetings with the Admiralty, and reading reports to himself on slow shifts. A subconscious little thing, impatience. She plays into it: “would you mind?”

She motions towards the piano.

Ed looks at it, at her. Turns slowly and opens the piano. Looks at her over his shoulder. She smiles, and he smiles back, a little less awkward, a little surer.

Talla may be a Xelayan with a low tolerance for human bullshit, but she’s a sensitive soul, she can appreciate some piano, especially when her Captain and good friend is playing it.

He starts slow, this song with a heavy sway to it- he starts stiff, and she can hear it in the sound that comes out. A few fuck-ups throw off the rhythm, Ed whispering a _“sorry”_ or a _“my bad”_.

Moments later, with no warning, he relaxes. The piano tune leads upward in this slow, unsteady rise, and blossoms- becomes something _more_. There is a distinct melody he brings out, not as high up as some of the notes. The chords move, rise, fall, echoing out into the room and into the stars, calling somewhere beyond.

Talla stops watching Ed’s back and the sloped set of his shoulders, turning to the window.

He isn’t singing anymore, which is unfortunate, but Talla enjoys the stars to a new light, is willing to admit that some human music is okay. Provided Ed performs it, is his whole awkward self about it, too, because it means so much more coming from him than a cocky human Ensign data-transferring her a mixtape of what should be her ‘introduction to humanity’s best’. She can see Ed being the type, though he’d at least be humble about it.

He’s humble about a lot of things- his skills as a pianist shouldn’t be one of them.

The heart of the tune, the strength of both hands playing full and flitting from place to place constantly. It all begins to wind down in sync, practiced, controlled until he’s holding four, three, two keys. She doesn’t want it to end.

And it doesn’t. They’re back to the way he’d started out the tune. The swaying rhythm to the left hand and a melody that chases it, staggers along up and down the length of the upper end. A couple of harmonies thrown in up there, otherwise left alone to a single string of notes that she thinks should belong to a voice.

He finishes and Talla makes a decision to not say anything about what’s going on, on the ship at the present time. He’s off the clock and _fuck_ knows it’s been hard enough to get him to take a damn break in the past.

Though, Talla has noticed him taking more time to himself- and spending more of that time not doing anything remotely work-related, which is a feat in and of itself. Ed, the known workaholic, beginning to become less work-orientated. She worries whether it’s not him learning that life isn’t only work, but a crisis of some sort. Which, if she goes by his recent behavior of withdrawing into his own space and problems- even more than he’d done in the past -she’s got decently solid grounds on which to worry.

He’s more than capable. That’s Ed: dependable, able, ready and willing. The flipside of that is what brings his safety, his outlook, and the reasoning behind his self-isolation into question.

How well does Ed depend on others, beyond the working environment?

“Kelly wants to talk to you. About yesterday.” She announces, predicting Ed’s physical recoil at the words to a 'T'. If he were any other Captain, she would have a hand in the back of his collar by now, dragging him to talk to his Commander.

But Talla, an independent party who holds enough knowledge from both sides of her Captain and her Commander to stay objective, knows that the conversation Kelly would bring down on him is the last thing he needs. That, and Kelly in general just seems like a bad idea for Ed, right now. This isn’t the place to push him for an answer to her questions, either- not in his safe space, the place he’s obviously come to escape all of that. “But, I’m gonna go tell her you’re busy,” shutting down Ed’s _“you don’t need to do that”_ with a self-assured: “I can find a way to distract her, don’t sweat it…”

She turns, stopping partway. The stars capture her for a moment more, “Oh. And… Ed?”

“Hm?”

He is still not playing the piano, must be waiting until he’s sure she’s gone. She’s already heard him play.

His insecurity, frustrating as it can be at times, gives her a reason to smile to herself.

There is nothing wrong with a sensitive Captain.

“You’re not as good as Ty.”

This, he laughs at. Very subdued and only for a moment, but that is good enough for Talla. She leaves, searches up what he’d played by matching her recording with archived files. _Unchained Melody_ is the song’s title, by same man Ed had named earlier. Henry Mancini. She listens to it, ends up taking the five minutes of its duration to walk back to Kelly’s quarters and inform her of Ed’s want to not be found.

 

In the face of her stubborn sometimes-girlfriend denying that Ed has any talent in any musical domain other than singing, Talla brings Kelly down to Deck F to listen. Only to prove a point- to prove herself right, since Kelly seems so adamant that _“Ed can sing but he sure as fuck can’t play the piano. Are you high?”_

It goes without saying that Kelly is shocked, the whisper of _“is that Moon River, what a wimp”,_ and _“he has a piano in his room, seriously, why come here”,_ to cover the shine Talla sees in her eyes, watching and listening to Ed play and sing.

“He’s coming to the next classics night.” Kelly whispers to her.

Talla thinks of Ed’s red cheeks, and that meek way he played for her, and how he’d closed the piano on his own right hand when he’d been so embarrassed about being caught red-handed, and his downright _“Mister fuckin’ Darcy”_ attitude, as John calls it.

“Good luck with that, Kel.”

 

 

 

**DAY 18**

***Yaphit’s Log Notes:***

***In Warp Again. Warp warp warp warp, let's do the time warp again.**

**Someone pour a sack of coffee beans in me please.***

 

Talla is laughing, _“easy there, cowboy,”_ her voice coming from some way down the hall.

It’s the first thing Ed hears that isn’t the firing of plasma guns or shouts, as he races around a corner- her tone puts him at ease a tiny bit. If Talla is laughing, there can’t be anything majorly against-regulation going on.

He’s been hearing the tell-tale sounds of plasma fire for the past few minutes, drifting from somewhere in the ship near medbay. The sporadic and unpredictable firing and loud voices and shrieks had thoroughly broken his concentration on Claire’s set of notes. Ratcheting him up, pulling into a coil, a spring ready to snap. Hell, just from the sound of the gun and never mind the crowing that followed, Ed’s stress levels kept on going up and up.

Once he’s gone to his own personal version of Red Alert it becomes had to go back, so he’s decided to come see what the fuss is and either put a stop to it or ask whoever’s doing the shooting to go somewhere that isn’t in the medbay’s vicinity.

An open, empty hall is the source of the voices, the same ones that would shout and squabble after the shots rang out. Ed pokes his head through the door, stepping in the rest of the way when no one spots him. A small crowd of fifteen to twenty crew members are gathered at the end of the room closest to Ed. At the other end, he can see a training target that Union officers would use to get their PM-44 licenses. Scattered marks are left over the middle three rings of the target, one on the outermost ring, and one on the edge between that and the empty space that indicates a miss.

Bortus is just lowering his gun, a young-looking crew member in security reds receiving cheers and pats on the back from the little group. Although he didn’t win with his shots, Bortus has a small smile on his face.

“What’s going on?” Ed asks, more to introduce himself than to really get a handle on the situation. People from all areas of the ship at all rankings make up the lot. He knows from their records that a majority of them are rated high in marksmanship.

Yes, he tries to memorize these kinds of things. He’s allowed to, he’s a Captain, it isn’t creepy.

And damn it all to hell, Gordon is among them. Ed hears him before he spots him.

Yaphit is also here, for some reason, and is the first to turn and greet him, waving a tendril of slime in Ed’s direction. The rest follow, their celebrations and Bortus’s smile fading out at once.

Dann steps forward.

“We’re having a competition for who can get most accurate,” Dann says, cheerful but a hint of meekness as he talks to Ed- Ed doubts he looks like he’s in the best of moods, tries to lighten up for Dann’s sake, “winner gets to take a… Shift off…”

He trails off because _here’s the Captain,_ the literal controller of their shifts, who was never informed of this arrangement.

“Uh-huh…” Ed says, eyeing the target down the length of the room, then the gun in Bortus’s hands. “Who’s winning?”

A hand is raised amidst the lot who part so Ed can see her properly. She’s the red-shirt Ensign, Ed realizes upon seeing the insignia on her shoulders, which had been the center of an excited huddle moments ago.

“I. Um. Ensign Chakravarthi, sir, I literally just won-” But she’s barely audible, everyone starting to complain.

“Woah, woah,” Ed is overwhelmed by the bout of negative feedback. Kelly is already on about Ed being a fun-fucker. Several people are delegitimizing the whole competition because _“if a Kaylon is excluded, that just fucks everything up,”_ a general consensus of _“well that was for nothing, I guess.”_ Such a swing from casual fun to demoralized anger, so Ed.

Ed does his damn best: “and, what if the Captain wins?”

Conversations stop. Kelly is frozen mid-sentence. A pin could be dropped and everyone would get ringing ears.

Sam Michaels breaks it with a quiet _“hold up, wha’?”_ and confused whispers break out, as though Ed isn’t right there and can hear every word, _“was that a joke,”_ and _“I don’t know and I don’t really wanna ask in case it wasn’t”_.

Kelly stares dumbly at him and he _knows_ he’s never bragged about his ability to wield a plasma gun, not even to her. He actually thinks he’s down-talked it to her specifically, like pretty much every other skill he has.

 _Stupid Ed_ , Ed thinks, a hint of rebellion to it, the two-hour talk he’d had with Claire earlier today still fresh, all her stifling and scary advice about his _“yes, it is in fact a very bad mental state, Ed, how many times do I have to tell you this”_ yet to sink in.

“What?” Kelly asks, voicing what everyone else is thinking, at a tone and volume Ed thinks he can respond to without feeling nosey, intrusive.

“What if I have a go?" He repeats, clarifies to the mix of confusion and unrest, "what do I get, if I win?"

That gets some laughs, which checks out. When the fuck would Ed ever take a shift off? Kelly laughs, all those who share his shifts or have known him in the past chuckle along. Dann, bless him, seems to be the only one who honestly thinks Ed could do it. He’s all excited, snatching the gun out of Bortus’s grasp and bringing it to Ed.

“Well,” he’s back to his normal bubble and grin, “what do you want?”

“Okay, _no_ ,” Kelly interferes, “let’s see if he actually lands _one_.”

It isn’t said nastily, but not entirely in jest, either. “ _Then_ , he can say what he wants.”

“So, let me get this straight.”

Ed gets more laughter. That wasn’t what he meant, but okay, whatever makes them happy. “If I win, I get whatever I ask for.”

“That is _not_ what I meant!”

Ed raises an eyebrow at her.

She should know better, she _should_ but she _doesn’t_ , Ed is thrilled to see. “But whatever! It’s not like you’ll beat Chakravarthi. You know what?” She steps up to him, bops him on the nose. “If you land three out of eight, I promise to never peer-pressure you into drinking ever again.”

He grips the gun, tries to keep composed when all he wants to do is jump in the air and laugh, clap, _this is either going to be ridiculously easy or very fucking mortifying_. Clamping it all back, doing it for the satisfaction, for the look on their faces, he sighs. Acts very put-upon, as if he hadn’t suggested the idea of participating in the first place.

“What have I got to lose, right?”

And, stepping past her, the crew parts to let him through to the shooting marker. Bortus gets the target to reset, and Ed rolls his shoulders back, cracks his neck to both sides.

Kelly boos.

“Don’t act all cool when you know you’re-”

Ed lifts the gun and with no warning, fires off three shots, dead-center into the bullseye of the target. Everyone goes livid at once, _Kelly_ ‘this’ and _Kelly_ ‘that’, _“Kelly you said he was no good”, “Kelly what the fuck how could you do this”, “Kelly we are all fucked now, he’s gonna make us do something terrible”,_ which obviously he wouldn’t. But there is a cloud of outrage in the room that overtakes common sense, Kelly shouting _“what the fuck,”_ over and over.

“I’ll be taking that consolation prize now!” Ed calls over his shoulder, smirking when he hears Kelly stop her broken-record screeching to shout a strained _“fuck you,”_ at him.

Ed shrugs and same as he had before, lifts his arms quickly. Aims down for half a second before firing the final five in rapid succession, right where the first ones had landed. Spinning the gun in his fingers, he turns back to the group.

Screams, smiles, now in favor, _“that was so badass, Captain, what the hell,”_ Dann is on him, ruffling his hair, and Bortus is clapping like it was some high-art performance.

“Where’s Chakravarthi?” He manages to speak over the chaos.

She comes to him, bounced around and grinning, despite being beaten. “What do you want?”

“I- me?”

“Yeah, what would you like.”

“Uhhh-”

“Anything.” And now Ed is mean all of a sudden, because it’s _“so unfair she gets something.”_ Ed wants to tell them she was going to win, anyway. He tacks on a _“within reason”_ to his offer, when she gets a particularly nasty suggestion from another Ensign.

Chakravarthi thinks long and hard, long enough for some of the people to filter out of the room, hard enough for those who hang around to take it down a few notches.

"I want you to give me shooting lessons." Is what she eventually settles on. Ed smiles at her as she holds her hand out for him to shake- while they do, she tightens her grip, locking him into contract and definitely leaving bruises: “and saber lessons, ‘cuz this guy is useless.”

She points over her shoulder at Gordon, his _“hey! Rude!”_ making Ed’s heart pitter-patter. Rain on a roof, comfort and love, and all the other things Ed doesn’t think about. He directs it at Chakravarthi, already fond of the young officer.

"And, I’ll fill in any shift you want to miss."

"I don’t like missing shifts," she smirks, pats him on the back on her way past, "thanks, Captain, let me know when you’re free!”

Taking the remaining non-Alpha shift crew members who Ed notes are all red-shirts, plus Yaphit, she waves to him and walks out. Surrounded by praise and playful teasing, soaking it all up, her smile bright, sharp. Ed sees a little of Kelly in her, a bit of himself. Ambition and dedicated to boot. All of Kelly’s charisma and confidence, enough of Ed’s tendency to become the center of attention and an ease around higher-ups that Kelly never quite got the hang of.

Captains, Admirals, Commissioners are all human, too. Same goes for non-humans- people in their own ways. The only things that should separate them is the need for order when it comes to organizing during times where organization is needed. If Ed were a stricter Captain, he may not have been sent into a trauma-related almost-panic during his rare desire for downtime. No one would have considered holding a slightly illegal shooting match, wouldn’t dared to pushing the boundaries of the rules, were Ed more strict on the enforcement of said code of conduct. He would’ve remained in Claire’s private lab, staring at his shiny chess hologram, a stupid fish taken by the shimmering, the puzzle it presents. He’d be fully locked in his mind, having nothing to do with his crew and his ex and the fun they’d been having, nothing to do other than focus on himself, nothing to do with his icky heart who, looking over Gordon, decides now is a great time to take up bungee-jumping.

To Kelly, John, Dann, and, unfortunately, Gordon- the only ones remaining –Ed sighs. He turns on them, knowing what he’s going to hear, the second he asks:

“Who’s idea was this?”

“Well, really, it was all Gordo,” Dann speaks for the rest, getting himself a punch from Gordon and a whisper of _“traitor”,_ from John, “but- yeah, we all carried it out.”

"Well, for my _second_ wish- if you’re going to do something like this, do it somewhere where I won’t hear it. Try a few decks down."

That’s a little sobering, but Ed gets nods and _“okay”_ s, even from Kelly. Ed’s feels like a terrible leader for killing their fun, despite its good-natured ending. "Third and final wish- stop listening to Gordon so much.”

Even Ed has it in him to laugh along with the rest, at Gordon’s offended _“shut up!”_ He has to force himself to not engage with a _“no you,”_ looks at Kelly, at John, anyone but Gordon. His heart decides bungee-jumping isn’t enough of a risk, moves on to sky-diving. “I’m kidding. Do more things like this- actually, that recc-room on Deck F is free, _hmm_ ," he hits Gordon’s shoulder, means to pat it or grab it but ends up miscalculating everything, and decides that walking away as fast as he can without seeming suspicious is the best solution to the situation, leaving behind a stammered: "it was great to see.”

 

Ed doesn’t stay long enough to see it.

John is punching Gordon’s arm, going to town on the poor man for the massive blush he’s got going on. Doesn’t know if he’s subconsciously living out Gordon’s romance and that’s what’s got him all worked up, or if he’s plain-old happy to be able to wail on Gordon for the foreseeable future, seeing as the dude is unable to get past his feelings and _actually_ do something about it.

Either way, John is having fun.

“You know, you can organize stuff like this. As. The Captain.” Kelly is calling after Ed, trying to stop John from giving Gordon a bruise all down the outside of his bicep.

“Eh,” Ed flaps one hand through the air in dismissal, not turning to her on his way out, “you don’t really need my order to do things on your own, do you?”

“We’ll check with you!” Dann calls after him. “When we- before we do stuff like this!”

“That sounds better.”

“Sweetness… And invite _you_?” He asks, dragging out the last word, Ed turning down the hall, disappearing out of sight and apparently deeming that enough reason to not reply. John pats Dann on the shoulder. Finally giving up on terrorizing Gordon.

New target acquired.

“One day. One day we’ll get him, Dann.”

“Gord, that is a mad blush!” Dann shouts, getting an indignant squawk in return.

“Mad blush.” John repeats, laughing at Gordon’s furious flailing, hitting at Dann, telling him to _“talk any louder about it, why don’t you?!”_

Kelly takes Talla’s hand and bolts before the oncoming shitshow begins. John would run too, if he weren’t so invested in these two. The borderline _sad_ level of infatuation Gordon’s got going on. The impossible mental block Dann has around a certain Ensign who they all know very well.

“You can see where I’m coming from, right?!” Gordon, sounding like he’s going through the ring of hell, begs both of them off.

“Yeah, man,” Dann agrees, “the Captain is pretty great-”

“Not as great as Roue.” John only has to mutter, and Dann is sent off into a spiral same as Gordon, who lets out a very sympathetic _“ohh, get on my level, Dann.”_

And John is free to taunt them, happy as can be, a man with the emotional maturity to avoid these pathetic middle-school-style crushes. Or, the emotional immaturity. Whichever it is, John’s just glad it’s not him. He’s done his time. Hiding his face behind his hands, bumbling around to avoid meeting the object of his affections. Fucking up simple tasks, royally fucking up on important orders, because he has to work next to someone he likes.

He is well and truly done with that.

Kvinski got his posting long time ago, splitting their time together.

Later, months of messages and calls and yearnings to see his face in real time later, John read that name on the crew list of the _USS Angelou_ , after the Battle of Earth took so many ships, and so many lives, Rohn Kvinski’s among them.

 

 

 

**DAY 21**

***Roue’s Log Notes:***

***Auglo Network, just out of Seven-Seven Station.**

**Why? Fuck you, that’s why!**

**(Captain’s words, not mine. Think he just wants to stare at the**

**Augulian nebulae for a while. He’s just Like That. We love him.)***

 

There is never a good time for romance, on a Union ship.

Fuck, Roue would even go as far to say there’s never a good time for romance if you work for the Union _and_ give a damn about your job at the same time.

He’s had his own mess of string-alongs and get-offs that last hours, weeks, nothing longer. Most have. The few Roue has watched toe the line between professional and romantic rarely end in success, and their gnarly and awkward ends are enough to send everyone’s heads back into the sands of loneliness. A desert that is shared by so, so many on the Orville.

Out there, in that desert, is a grainy, dusty, well-used patch that has been fought, dug up and ran on, by one man Roue has developed an interest in.

Because, really. How could you not work side-by-side with _Gordon Malloy_ and not get even a little over-invested in the man’s sweetness, humor, and tendency to overshare? A purely platonic interest, of course, as Roue’s heart already has its sights set on someone else.

For that exact reason- his love stunted before it could start -Roue needed more romance in his fucking life, and if Gordon was more than willing to provide, then you can bet your ass Roue is going to cling to and live vicariously through his stories for as long as he can. Until the six-year long crush- if Roue remembers rightly –is resolved.

Or until, as Gordon often says: _“he finds out and boots me into space. I know, yeah, I’m dramatizing. But likin’ the guy and not knowin’ where you stand with him is as bad as not breathin’. So, like, when it comes to that, and he says ‘no thanks’? Yeah. I’ll be fucked, Roue. I’ll be pretty fuckin’ fucked.”_

Roue gets it, man.

Roue fucking gets it.

So he’s been watching on. Gasps like it’s some period-piece show of undying love, every time Ed’s hands happen to touch Gordon’s. Gets basted off of his face alongside Gordon, after a too-hard day of Ed being himself and Gordon fucking _swooning_ over it. Calls Michaels and takes Gordon to the simulator to distract him, because Gordon wants to stop himself from telling Ed _“all I need is you”_ , in a time of weakness where just seeing Ed’s face would be enough to set him off on a rash, dangerous, reckless path that could ruin him. Talks him down over a drink or two, as Gordon convinces himself and then unconvinced himself, a teetering seesaw of _he loves me, he hates me,_ questioning Ed’s level of care. Ed’s love for him- as a friend, _“as a friend”_ , Gordon will repeat to himself. _“We’ve only been friends, to him, why do I feel so shit about wanting more, Roue? Why? It’s been three weeks. But- but now I know, and I know it’s been- I can feel all six. Fucking Years.”_

Whenever Ed comes down the bridge to stand over Gordon’s shoulder and see firsthand what’s going on, Roue can feel the tension buzzing in Gordon, has a _look_ with him as soon as Ed goes away. The kind of look that means _‘did you fucking see that?! He was right! There!’_

Gordon will not shut up about his and Ed’s sparring sessions they hold every third or fourth day. Roue can’t get enough. What’s better than two people getting their tensions out about one another by using each other as targets to swing sharp sticks at? Besides, Gordon has said it before, will say it again, _“what the fuck is hotter than a man besting you in a saber fight and then holding the tip of his sword under your chin, and you’re forced to hold your head up and he looks at you dead in the eye and says ‘I won’ and just fuckin’ holds your life in one of his hands?”_

To that, Roue will reply: _“doesn’t he always, though? Hold your life in his hands,”_ and Gordon will sigh, dreamy and far-away, _“I would do anything for Ed. That’s kinda scary, but. Anything, Roue, fuckin’ anything.”_

He gets so caught up in it, sometimes, that Roue forgets.

 _He’s_ not the one trying to woo Ed.

Gordon is.

And Gordon is _fucking terrible_ at it. He seems ready to tell Ed at one second, then it’s sand and grit in his ears the next, deaf both to himself and to Roue’s encouragements. Blind to what stands right in front of him if he just dares to look it in the eye.

So, as endlessly invigorating as it is, Roue also finds it just as endlessly frustrating.

To make matters worse, Ed has _clearly_ had his head buried in the sand for so long, he’s forgotten there’s a world outside it. The air above it is something he hasn’t breathed in a long while. Must’ve gone to a standstill, around the middle of his and Kelly’s marriage. Must’ve stuffed his face far down enough his chest and middle got stuck under it, too, when they’d split, divorced.

Gordon has all these new feelings that turn out to be not-so-new, simply ones he never knew meant he’d been interested in Ed _that way_. Sends him a bit crazy, or a bit quiet, introspective, depending on how their shift has turned out. He is _so_ determined to keep this- the turmoil _and_ the feelings –away from Ed, his usual support, that Roue has taken up a pillar-like role at Gordon’s side.

And Gordon says it himself, _“there’s never time for romance, on this fuckin’ ship”,_ goes a step further, _“there’s not going to be time for romance, in his fuckin’ life”_ , but Roue isn’t so sure on that one.

Roue isn’t very inclined to agree. He hasn’t seen all the evidence to Ed’s case- has seen quite the contrary, in fact. The jury’s still out. Hold, please.

As deeply as Ed’s case of head-buried-in-the-sand may run, Roue’s keen eyes and knacks for _these things_ steer him towards a discovery. Lead him into watching not only Gordon, but _Ed,_ as well.

It sure does present him with a possible alternative to Gordon’s default _“he doesn’t have time for me.”_ The implied _“he hasn’t changed since his marriage, all he cares about is work”_ falsified, in Roue’s opinion.

Ed has started to hold Gordon’s gaze for a far shorter length of time than he will with anyone else on the bridge.

Ed is suddenly talking to everyone but Gordon, where they’d usually have one back-and-forth or another going to liven a boring shift.

Ed is touching Gordon’s arm or shoulder less and less. Draws back in a sudden jerk if his hand and Gordon’s touch. He’d nearly dropped and broken his PADD, yesterday, when Gordon reached up to fix something on Ed’s display and ran his palm across Ed’s exposed wrist in order to reach the _apply_ button.

If Roue were to hazard a farfetched and, alright, very romantically-swayed guess, he’d say Ed fell for Gordon at some point, too. Knowing Ed, it would have been like going down like the speed of sound- not at all and then all at once, same as how Gordon had told Roue he’d done, after that rescue mission on Tulo 17, spiders and swords and Ed being so brave.

Where Gordon is the type to not realize his own feelings at the time, Roue is certain that Ed can be so in-tune with his own emotions, he can selectively block, numb, shut out ones he doesn’t think he wants or needs or deserves. His marriage was a decent indicator of that, to Roue: you don’t go through a rollercoaster of a relationship with a bomb like _Kelly_ because you’re _that emotionally disjointed_. She would not have dated you in the first place.

 _But Roue_ , you’ll ask, _if so much time has passed, why do you think Ed is still in love with Gordon, if he truly did fall in love with the man a possibly very long time ago?_

Call it a hunch.

A way Ed starts to hold himself, as if he’s got an old habit coming back, coming from an ancient and buried place he’d pushed some _thing_ or another over to patch it up. A style of avoidance that plasters and pulls down faces, all of them cracked enough for Roue to see, yet impossible for someone in Gordon’s position to get a peek behind- to even realize a front is there to begin with. Ed is wearing it all as if he’s got fresh burns that threaten to cover his body and engulf him and give him away; new sets of teeth growing in, lose and infuriating and uncomfortable.

When Roue thinks back, _yeah,_ Ed has always been like that, with Gordon. Maybe not as often as it is, nowadays. He’d been like that with everyone, until they’d broken through their first crisis unscathed and all accounted for. Dropped it, let go of a lot of internal rules and regulations, and yet his awkward, fast jokes and quick wit- it all was kept up, a formidable barrier for Gordon and Gordon alone to face. Gordon, none the wiser.

Gordon- Roue assumes after all these leaps of logic -has rarely if ever faced Ed with all the walls down, the defenses out for the count.

They’re closest as lifelong friends, thick as thieves.

And even there, when feelings blossom that outweigh the norm, outstrip the worth of the balance in the relationship that has existed so steadily in one’s life, a dependable foundation strengthened by history-

Romance doesn’t seem to have a place to grow. Its roots unwelcome, its presence unnatural. The storm it might bring far outweighing the present solidity, solidarity.

Romance hasn’t got a place on a Union ship, but it isn’t an impossible feat. As many examples as Roue has seen of failures, he’s also seen the flourishing ones.

Gordon and Ed, kings of impossible, seem to think it does not have a place between them.

Roue is fucking dismayed. But, Ed is his Captain, and Gordon is his best friend- it’s not like he can go up to them and say _“hey fuckers, you two love each other.”_ What the fuck else is he supposed to do? Lock them in a closet?

Holy shit.

 _But Roue_ , you may ask, _what the fuck, do not lock your Captain and best friend in a closet._

To that, Roue asks you to try and deal with someone else’s hopeless crush, watch the object of that crush also crush back but shove it down at a chronic degree.

_What would you do then, reader?_

What the fuck would you do- Roue would love to know. Any help would be great.

 

“Dann!” Roue screams, barging into his Dann’s room.

Dann’s scream is piercing, bloody murder, and the fool shouldn’t have given Roue his code if he didn’t want to be woken up whenever Roue wanted him awoken.

“Roue, what the _shit_?” Dann asks, once Roue has taken up a spot on Dann’s sheets, nestling in for what’s left of their downtime. “Why?”

“I have a plan.”

“A plan?”

“An Ed Mercer plan.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“A Gordon and Ed plan.”

“Right, of course.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We need to pick good timing, too, it’s”-

“Cool, cool.” And, shutting him up so easily, Dann pats him on the head before settling back into his pillows, daring to worm his feet under Roue’s warm side. “For now, sleep. Please.”

“Anything for you.” Roue mumbles.

 

Friends, first.

Roue gets it, he really does, but if he can at least help Gordon, then.

Maybe, he might find the courage to go for his own.

 

 

 

**DAY 22**

***Isaac’s Log Notes:***

***In Warp. Captain has been missing for 2 hours,**

**54 minutes, 34 seconds, 35 seconds, 36-***

 

> ED MERCER, SEARCHING…

> ED MERCER, SEARCHING… NOW ENTERING: DECK D.

> ED MERCER SPENDS APPROXIMATELY 6.2% OF TIME PER DAY ON DECK D ON AVERAGE. STATISTICAL LIKELIHOOD OF LOCATING CAPTAIN ON DECK D:

>> 0.188, 99.9 CONFIDENCE. ACTION- **ALERT-**

> PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: LOCATE

CAPTAIN ED MERCER. <

> PRIMARY OBJECTIVE DOES NOT ALLOW FOR .01 ALPHA. ACTION:

>> CONTINUE SEARCH ON DECK D.

> ED MERCER, SEARCHING…

> AUDITORY INPUT DETECTED, UNUSUAL ACTIVITY. TWO METERS RIGHT, TEN FORWARD.

> LOCATION PINPOINTED.

> FOUR BIOLOGICAL LIFEFORMS AT LOCATION OF INCIDENT.

> SUSPICION OF NOISE’S RELATION TO ED MERCER’S EXTRAORDINARY LOCATION:

>> VERY HIGH.

> NEW PRIMARY OBJECTIVE:

INVESTIGATE NOISE. <

> NOISE, APPROACHING…

> POTENTIAL SOURCE OF NOISE DETECTED, APPROACHING…

> TWO OF FOUR UNIDENTIFIED LIFESIGNS NOW SCAN-ABLE.

> SCANNING…

> RECOGNIZED LIEUTENANT DANN AND UNRECOGNIZABLE ENSI- CORRECTION:

>> ENSIGN ROUE. TWO LIFEFORMS REMAIN UNIDENTIFIED.

> AUDIO INPUT, LIEUTENANT DANN:

>> “WE GOT THE WRONG GUY!”

> AUDIO INPUT, ENSIGN ROUE:

>> “HE HAD RED HAIR!”

> AUDIO INPUT, LIEUTENANT DANN:

>> “SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE RED-”

>> CORRECTION- LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER JOHN LAMARR IDENTIFIED. ONE LIFEFORM REMAINS UNIDENTIFIED.

> AUDIO INPUT, JOHN LAMARR:

>> “FUCK FUCK FUCK IT’S ISAAC GUYS SHUT UP.”

> IT IS ISAAC.

>>>>> THAT WAS A JOKE.

> MOVEMENT HAS CEASED. SCANNING…

> FOUR LIFEFORMS DETECTED, THREE IDENTIFIED, FOURTH REMAINS UNIDENTIFIED, ALL STATUSES REMAIN UNCHANGED- CORRECTION:

>> FIVE LIFEFORMS DETECTED. FIFTH IN CLOSE PROXIMITY TO FOURTH UNIDENTIFIED LIFEFORM.

> AUDIO HAS CEASED. SCANNING… ROUE, DANN, LAMARR WITHIN TWO METERS, UNMOVING, NO AUDIO.

> SCANNING…

> CONSIDERING VERBAL OUTPUT- **ALERT** -

> AUDIO INPUT, LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER LAMARR:

>> “SCATTER!!!”

> ROUE, DANN, LAMARR MOVING AT HIGH SPEEDS IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS.

> SOURCE OF NOISE REMAINS UNIDENTIFIED.

> ROUE, DANN, LAMARR LEAVING SCANNING RANGE. NO PURSUIT NEEDED, REMAINING LIFEFORMS MORE PROMISING TO COMPLETING PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: INVESTIGATE NOISE, AND SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: LOCATE CAPTAIN ED MERCER. ACTION:

>> EVALUATE TWO REMAINING LIFESIGNS.

> EVALUATING…

> IDENTIFIED HUMAN BIOLOGY FOR BOTH LIFEFORMS.

> EVALUATING...

> EVALU- **ALERT-**

> AUDIO INPUT, UNKNOWN LIFEFORM, MUFFLED- ACTION:

>> ENHANCE AUDIO:

>> “ISAAC?! LET ME OUT!”

> PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: INVESTIGATE

NOISE IS COMPLETE. <

> SPEECH PATTERN MATCHES EARLIER AUDIO.

> REINSTATE OBJECTIVE: LOCATE CAPTAIN

ED MERCER AS PRIMARY OBJECTIVE. <

> PERFORM CONFIRMATION CROSSCHECK. ACTION:

>> COMPARE AUDIO:

_> > “ISAAC?! LET ME OUT!”_

> AND AUDIO:

_> > “A. A. A, WHAT THE FUCK, JOHN- NO- NO NO NO DON’T LOCK- JOHN! JOHN!! FUCK YOU- OH, HEY [UNDETECTABLE] SHIT, YEAH. IT’S NOT ANYTHING  YOU’VE DONE [UNDETECTABLE] NO, REALLY, IT’S PROBABLY JUST SOME DUMB PRANK- LET ME JUST- FUCKING DAMNIT- LET ME OUT!! JOHN!!”_

> LIFEFORM CONFIRMED MATCH TO EARLIER SOURCE.

> LIFEFORM SCAN REVEALS PATTERNS SIMILAR TO CAPTAIN ED MERCER’S.

> NEW PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: IDENTIFY

POTENTIAL ED MERCER LIFEFORM. <

> POTENTIAL ED MERCER LIFEFORM IS BEHIND DOOR. ACTION:

>> OPEN DOOR.

> UNABLE TO OPEN DOOR. CONCLUSION:

>> DOOR HAS BEEN LOCKED BY A CODE. ACTION:

>>> REMOVE DOOR.

>>>> IMPERMISSIBLE ACTION: COMPUTE DOOR CODE.

>>>> COMPUTING…

>>>> COMPUTING…

>>>> IMPERMISSIBLE ACTION: COMPLETE. DOOR CODE ENTERED.

> TWO REMAINING LIFEFORMS NOW SCAN-ABLE.

> LIEUTENANT HARDER AND- **ALERT** -

> VERBAL OUTPUT:

>> “CAPTAIN. I HAVE FOUND YOU.”

> PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: IDENTIFY POTENTIAL

ED MERCER LIFEFORM COMPLETE. <

> AUDIO INPUT, ED MERCER:

>> “THANKS, ISAAC. AND SORRY AGAIN, JOE.”

> AUDIO INPUT, JOE HARDER:

>> “NO WORRIES, CAPTAIN. IF I HAD TO BE LOCKED IN A SUPPLY CLOSET WITH ANYONE, I’M GLAD IT WAS YOU.”

> REINSTATE OBJECTIVE: LOCATE CAPTAIN

ED MERCER AS PRIMARY OBJECTIVE. <

> PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: LOCATE CAPTAIN

ED MERCER COMPLETE. <

> CAPTAIN ED MERCER OBTAINED. PERFORMING STATUS CHECK…

> STATUS CHECK, ED MERCER…

> AUDIO INPUT, ED MERCER:

>> “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THAT WAS ABOUT?”

> QUESTION RECEIVED. LIKELIHOOD OF ADDRESSING ISAAC:

>> .67, .95 CONFIDENCE. CONTROLLING FOR CONTEXTUAL FACTORS…

> UPDATED LIKELIHOOD:

>> .22, .95 CONFIDENCE. NO VERBAL RESPONSE NECESSARY.

> CONTINUING STATUS CHECK…

> AUDIO INPUT, JOE HARDER:

>> “NOPE. YOU?”

> QUESTION RECEIVED. CONTEXTUAL FACTORS INDICATE NO ADDRESSING OF ISAAC.

> CONTINUING STATUS CHECK…

> STATUS CHECK: COMPLETE. CAPTAIN ED MERCER:

>> OKAY. UNINJURED, SAFE.

> LOCAL DIRECTIVE: KEEP ED

MERCER SAFE: MAINTAINED. <

> AUDIO INPUT, ED MERCER:

>> “NO… WAS THAT ROUE?”

> QUESTION RECEIVED. LIKELIHOOD OF ADDRESSING ISAAC:

>> .71, .95 CONFIDENCE. CONTROLLING FOR CONTEXTUAL FACTORS…

> UPDATED LIKELIHOOD:

>> .89, .95 CONFIDENCE. VERBAL RESPONSE NECESSARY.

> CONSIDERING QUESTION: “WAS THAT ROUE”

> CONFIRMED. ROUE HAS BEEN PRESENT WITHIN ACCEPTABLE TIME-FRAME TO ALLOW REASONABLE QUESTIONING.

> SUSPICION OF ROUE’S INVOLVEMENT IN ED MERCER’S EXTRAORDINARY LOCATION:

>> HIGH.

> VERBAL RESPONSE FORMULATED.

> VERBAL OUTPUT:

>> “YES. JOHN LAMARR AND DANN WERE ALSO HERE. I BELIEVE I HEARD LAMARR ENTRAP YOU IN THE SUPPLY CLOSET, AS WELL.”

> AUDIO INPUT, ED MERCER:

>> “I’LL BET YOU GORD PUT THEM UP TO THIS… SORRY AGAIN.”

> AUDIO INPUT, JOE HARDER:

>> “AND AGAIN, CAPTAIN, ALL GOOD. IT WAS A HARMLESS PRANK- AT LEAST NO ONE LOST A LEG.”

> HARDER MOVING, SLOW. PASSING ISAAC. UNINTERESTED IN ISAAC. NO ACTION REQUIRED.

> AUDIO INPUT, JOE HARDER:

>> “CATCH YOU LATER, CAPTAIN!”

> MOVEMENT DETECTED. ED MERCER PERFORMING WAVE. COMMON USE: FAREWELL, OR GREETING. LIKELIHOOD OF WAVE USED FOR FAREWELL:

>> .999, .99 CONFIDENCE. GREETING WOULD BE ILLOGICAL.

> AUDIO INPUT, ED MERCER:

>> “IM GOING TO KILL HIM.”

> STATEMENT CONTAINS THREATENING CONTENT. LIKELIHOOD OF ED MERCER COMMITTING HOMICIDE:

>> .77, .99 CONFIDENCE. CONTROLLING FOR: GORDON MALLOY…

> UPDATED LIKELIHOOD:

>> .000, .999999999999(-RECURRING) CONFIDENCE. HIGHLY IMPROBABLE, POTENTIALLY FIRST IMPOSSIBILITY ENCOUNTERED BY ISAAC.

>>>>> THAT WAS NOT A JOKE.

>>>>> FILING PRESENT INTERACTION WITH ED MERCER FOR USE, UNDER:

>>>>> “QUESTIONS TO ASK CLAIRE FINN / HUMANS / CREW / ED MERCER”.

>>>>> AND:

>>>>> “QUESTIONS TO ASK CLAIRE FINN / HUMANS / CREW / GORDON MALLOY”.

>>>>> AND:

>>>>> “QUESTIONS TO ASK CLAIRE FINN / HUMANS / WEIRD SHIT / IS THIS A ROMANCE”.

> … NO ACTION NECESSARY.

> AUDIO INPUT, ED MERCER:

>> “AND YOU JUST CALCULATED HOW LIKELY I AM TO ACTUALLY KILL GORD, HUH.”

> QUESTION RECEIVED. NO POSSIBLE DIRECTION OTHER THAN ISAAC.

> CONSIDERING QUESTION: “YOU JUST CALCULATED HOW LIKELY I AM TO ACTUALLY KILL GORD”- CORRECTION:

>> STATEMENT. NO VERBAL RESPONSE NECESSARY.

> VERBAL RESPONSE NECESSARY.

> DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

> VERBAL RESPONSE NECESSARY!

> EXPLAIN.

>>>>> DESIGNATION: CLAIRE FINN:

>>>>> _“ISAAC, SOMETIMES PEOPLE SAY SOMETHING THAT ISN’T A QUESTION, BUT YOU SHOULD RESPOND, ANYWAY.”_

> EXPLANATION ACCEPTED.

> FORMULATING VERBAL RESPONSE…

> VERBAL OUTPUT:

>> “YES, CAPTAIN. I BELIEVE IT IS STATISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE.”

> ED MERCER IS COVERING FACE. UNUSUAL HEAT SIGNATURE DETECTED.

> FAMILIAR PATTERN DETECTED:

>> DESIGNATION: CLAIRE FINN. FILED UNDER:

>>> “ROMANCE, HAPPINESS”.

>> AND:

>>> “EMBARRASSMENT, UPSET”.

> LIKELIHOOD OF ED MERCER “ROMANCE, HAPPINESS”:

>> UNCLEAR. INSUFFICIENT DATA.

> LIKELIHOOD OF ED MERCER “ROMANCE, HAPPINESS”:

>> UNCLEAR. INSUFFICIENT DATA.

> AUDIO INPUT, ED MERCER, MUFFLED- ACTION:

>> ENHANCE AUDIO:

>> “ET TU, ISAAC…”

> LANGUAGE DETECTED:

>> LATIN. TRANSLATION: “YOU TOO”. COMPLETE SENTENCE: “EVEN YOU, ISAAC.”- **ALERT** -

> REFERENCE DETECTED: JULIUS CAESAR, AFTER BEING STABBED IN THE BACK.

> COMPUTING…

> NO APPARENT RELEVANCE, COMPUTING…

> COMPUTING…

> COMPUTING COMPLETE. ED MERCER UNDER IMPRESSION THAT CALCULATIONS ON HIS LIKELIHOOD TO KILL GORDON MALLOY WAS IMPLYING: ISAAC UNDERSTANDS THE ROMANTIC SITUATION BETWEEN ED MERCER AND GORDON MALLOY. COMPUTATION:

> ED MERCER IS FRUSTRATED THAT ISAAC ACKNOWLEDGES THE SITUATION. CONCLUSION:

>> CAPTAIN IS UNABLE TO COMPREHEND LIEUTENANT MALLOY’S FEELINGS.

> SOLUTION- **ALERT** -

> AUDIO INPUT, ED MERCER:

>> “HEY. I DON’T KNOW WHAT CLAIRE’S TAUGHT YOU, BUT. NOT EVERYTHING IS AS EASY AS APOLOGIZING AND REWIRING A BUNCH OF YOUR TESTS AND TRIGGER SWITCHES, OKAY?”

> COMPUTING…

> COMPUTING- COMPARISON: ED MERCER COMPARING ISAAC’S RELATIONSHIP WITH CLAIRE FINN TO ED MERCER’S RELATIONSHIP WITH GORDON MALLOY.

> COMPUTING- COMPARISON: ED MERCER BELIEVING ISAAC’S RELATIONSHIP WITH CLAIRE FINN IS “EASIER” THAN ED MERCER’S RELATIONSHIP WITH GORDON MALLOY. COMPUTING SOURCE OF CONFLICT: “EASIER”:

>> “EASIER”, REFERENTIAL TO ABILITY TO BEGIN AND MAINTAIN RELATIONSHIP.

> COMPUTING EASE OF ISAAC’S RELATIONSHIP WITH CLAIRE FINN:

>> EXTERNAL PRESSURE PRESENT IN DIFFICULTIES CAUSED BY JUDGMENT. INTERNAL PRESSURE PRESENT AT MODERATE DIFFICULTY IN CONSOLIDATING KAYLON AND HUMAN BELIEFS. JUDGMENTS HISTORICALLY ABLE TO BE OVERCOME, LITTLE INFLUENCE ON RELATIONSHIP. CONFLICTS HISTORICALLY SOLVABLE THROUGH COMMUNICATION.

> COMPUTING EASE OF ED MERCER’S RELATIONSHIP WITH GORDON MALLOY:

>> EXTERNAL PRESSURE PRESENT IN CAPTAIN STATUS, POTENTIAL OTHER-SPECIES JUDGMENT ON HUMAN SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIP. INTERNAL PRESSURE PRESENT. MUST BE DISSECTED IN TWO AREAS IN ORDER OF PROMINENCE, GORDON MALLOY AND ED MERCER:

>>> GORDON MALLOY: FOND OF ED MERCER, OVERHEARD PROCLAIMING LOVE AND AFFECTION OF ED MERCER ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS NOT IN PROXIMITY OF ED MERCER, CRYING ABOUT ED MERCER ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS NOT IN PROXIMITY OF ED MERCER, HISTORICALLY RECKLESS WITH ROMANTIC PURSUITS- RESERVATION WITH ED MERCER MAY INDICATE CONFUSION OF DIFFERENCE IN FEELINGS -, OBSERVED LEAVING ED MERCER’S PROXIMITY WITH UNUSUAL READINGS, OBSERVED DRAWING LOVEHEARTS AROUND TEXT ‘ED MERCER’ ON PERSONAL PADD.

>>> ED MERCER: HISTORICALLY FEARFUL OF OWN INADEQUACY, HISTORICALLY BAD AT WORK-LIFE BALANCE, OBSERVED WATCHING GORDON MALLOY FOR NO APPARENT REASON, OBSERVED LESS GENERAL TIME SPENT IN GORDON MALLOY’S PROXIMITY- DECREASE FROM 43% TO 12%, CONTROLLED FOR ON-SHIFT PROXIMITY –, OBSERVED LESS PHYSICAL CONTACT WITH GORDON MALLOY- DECREASE FROM 30% TO 3% OVERALL -, 63% INCREASE IN TIME SPENT IN ISOLATION OFF-SHIFT OVERALL.

> ED MERCER PRESENTS INABILITY TO ACCEPT RELATIONSHIP WITH GORDON MALLOY AS A REASONABLE OUTCOME. RESULTED IN OVERALL RECLUSION, PHYSICAL DISTANCE, LIKELY EMOTIONAL DISTANCE. UPDATED CONCLUSION:

>> CAPTAIN DOES NOT WISH TO BELIEVE GORDON MALLOY’S FEELINGS, ADDITIONALLY:

>> CAPTAIN DOES NOT WISH TO ACCEPT HIS OWN FEELINGS FOR GORDON MALLOY. ADDITIONALLY:

> CAPTAIN DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO LOVE.

> …

>>>>> THAT WAS A JOKE.

> CAPTAIN IS FEARFUL OF BEGINNING A RELATIONSHIP WITH GORDON MALLOY. SOLUTION:

> UNKNOWN. ILLOGICAL CONCLUSION DOES NOT CONSOLIDATE WITH ANY POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS.

 

 

 

**DAY 25**

***Dann's Log Notes:***

***High orbit around Ungar. Parked, just chilling. Dancing shoes on.**

**Best hat on. Ready to party.***

 

The Orville’s mess hall is lit in a beautiful blue-yellow gradient, the plants pushed to the side of the room. It is so striking that Ed can see it from all the way down the end of the hall leading to it, wants to stop and observe for a moment longer than Kelly allows him to.

In the windows, the deep blue seas underneath Ungar’s yellow, toxic clouding is in clear view behind its black-crystal moon, matching the lighting either on purpose or by chance. Both have their sides lit perfectly by their sun. The ship continues its orbit around the moon and Ungar drifts, the moon eclipsing the planet, and Ed makes it to the entryway of the mess hall when Ungar is at its furthest.

Ed is only here because Kelly complained her way into his office, threatened to turn is desk off thereby destroying his pages-long essay on the crystalized and yet-to-be-named moon, towed him all the way from there to the mess hall. He’s the only one dressed in uniform and life is a _nightmarish hellscape_ that Ed _does not_ want to engage with right now. Beautiful the mess hall, the view, and the crew having a great time may be- it does not change the fact that Ed’s internal organs are still having a punch-up over _being here_ verses _being alone and working on work_ , and _“I do not need to be babysat or wing-manned Kelly, please leave me alone”,_ and an overall distaste at being _dragged out of his office_ and into a social situation he’d much rather avoid.

It’s the best night of the month, for pretty much everyone on board other than Ed: open mic, song requests limited to the classics: anything before the twenty-second century. The crew had practically unionized to force Ed’s hand into making this a _thing_ every few weeks, because on the first- completely accidental –karaoke night, Isaac sang Christine Aguilera’s _Candyman_ after minimal prompting from Henry. All he had to say was _“Claire would love it”,_ and Isaac was up there. It was apparently _“the funniest thing, we want more!”_

So, ever the sucker for his crew, Ed provided the space and time to have this as a _thing_ , spanning a full fifteen hours so every shift could get a go in their off-shift time.

He never liked the sound of it, hears it from down a hallway and turns the other way. Personally, he’d rather do work. Would rather not endure the public shaming of his rendition of _Brown-eyed Girl_ he usually performs to the showerhead. Would rather sing showtunes in the privacy of his own room- sings _Wonderful_ from Wicked to piss Gordon off whenever he’s beating him at something he thinks he’s better than Ed at, which is a lot of things. Gordon is cocky and Ed is determined and it’s kind of perfect but Ed’s trying _not to think about Gordon_ now that they’re both in the same room. But there Gordon is, across the room, laughing at something Talla says, dressed smart in a button-down and jeans.

A mean color of green burns at the bottom of Ed’s heart.

Draining as social situations such as this can be, there is a particular _someone_ he’d rather avoid in general, as much as he can help it. His obsession with Ungar’s moon was that avoidance technique.

Ed is going to keep denying it. He’s not about to change his heart now- he’s been doing this for so long, what would be the point? It hurts Ed to have his head in that space for too long.

 _That space_ being the _I’ve been in love with my best friend for years and at this point it is too pathetic and pointless to act on it_ space. At least, to Ed, that’s what he calls it at face-value. Ed is too cowardly to think about it in bouts longer than ten seconds- he snaps out of this one in three, grinning when a great big disruption comes in the form of Dann, bumbling and tripping in his haste to get around the crowded floor and greet Ed.

Dann is so excited to see him, always is. He announces that Ed is here, gets some yells back. Leading Ed across the floor towards their usual group, Ed realizes he’s been staring dead-on at Gordon. He watches his feet. Kelly on his heels, Dann clinging to his arm, Talla and Gordon shouting a _“hello”_   in the middle of cackling at whatever joke they’d cracked; there’s a crackling in Ed’s chest and he does nothing to smother it, so used to the feel.

Sometimes it’s a little comforting, to know that it’s there. That he still feels that way. Is able to have those feelings he’d thought were ran through and carved to bits by Kelly. He’s got nothing on Talla, either, for having fun with Gordon- Ed knows it’s all his own problem. Seeing people with Kelly still gets to him, too. He’s gotten better at masking it, and substantially better at dealing with it in a healthy way, thanks to Claire.

Speaking of, Claire is finishing up a dance to _Singing in the Rain_ with Isaac, their song sung by John, whose voice was so natural, Ed hadn’t even thought it was him covering the song.

Ed looks up at the stage, the flow of Claire’s gold and black dress and Isaac, shining in the soft blue lighting, and part of him _wants_ to get up there.

He hates that Kelly can read him like a damn book. She takes his hand, dragging him. He digs his heels in.

“Ed. I was married to you for how long? And I can tell you: you are good at it.”

“You would say that because you were married to me.”

“I _would_ say that because I am no longer married with you and don’t have to put up with your defensive bullshit, now get up there!”

“Oh man!” Gordon shouts, sending Ed into a rush of queasiness- in a sweetly, too-much sort of way. “Don’t you dare sing what I think you’re gonna sing!”

“I’m not gonna sing!” Ed says, busy thinking about what he _could_ sing, trying to figure out what could be considered inappropriate. Gordon has never heard him sing anything other than _Wonderful_ , and of course he wants Gordon to sing with him, if he’s going through with this, which- Kelly’s grip on him tells him he doesn’t have a choice. Ed doesn’t know what he’ll do with himself if Gordon does sing with him. Doesn’t know whether to play a trump card- pull rank, get Kelly to argue with him, anything –and hightail it to his office. Doesn’t know why, when he catches Gordon’s eye for the briefest of seconds, his blood boils and he forgets why he’s so scared of doing anything that could remotely show his romantic desire.

Ed doesn’t think about it. Pushes it down, same as always, lets out a laugh and a smile and an uncomfortable _“seriously, no, no way.”_

“Kel, need a hand-” Talla starts to say, Ed still resisting Kelly’s tugging.

“I’m going, _okay_ ,” He jumps, lets himself be led by Kelly for the second time tonight, “I’m _going_.”

On his way up, Claire passes by with Isaac behind her, soft and comforting, _“hi Ed, good to see you”,_ and he’s about to reply but Kelly shoves his back until he’s all the way up the stairs and standing on the _oh my fucking God,_ his mind goes blank.

Ed hasn’t shown his face to a single classics night. Not since the initial Isaac incident, which could hardly be classified as _a night_. Sure, he’d faced the crowd that demanded a ship-wide invite to a night set up for this exact purpose. He’d faced larger crowds and delivered a speech- faced this very crowd and given speeches, orders.

The response of _“yay, Captain”,_ and the laughter, anticipation, _“he can’t sing, why else would he never come? This’ll be entertaining”,_ is just as motivating as it is frightening. Ed loves to exceed their expectations, gets a kick out of spiting people, in the nicest way possible. And in the not-so-nice way, too. Definitely. There are more teachers than he can count on his fingers, whose faces he loved rubbing his good grades in. Especially when he had to go above their heads for a re-grading.

Ed tries to come up with a song, and nothing comes out, everything vetoed by the tiny Gordon in his head Ed keeps trying to muffle, shouting: “ _I like that song!”_ or _“that’s so romantic!”_

He tries to ask Kelly to just _“put anything on, please”_ , but _nothing comes out_ , Ed’s head going on a loop of _“oh fuck that is a lot of people”_ , he never knew he had any kind of stage fright.

Sitting alone in his dorm room instead of attending and doing his speech for his Union Point graduation- and his high-school graduation, for that matter -makes a lot more sense, now. _Right_ now. Standing on a tiny stage before one-hundred odd people, all of whom he knows, has spoken to at one point or another in his Captaincy, a third of the people on-board.

Speeches for work are just that- work. Necessary. Mandatory, so Ed does them as part of his job. Take even a step away from that?

He shudders. He might pass out- maybe then Kelly will give him a break.

“I know _just_ the right thing.” Kelly says, not loud enough for anyone but Ed to hear.

The song starts.

It’s one of those rare moments where Ed feels that betrayal all over again, sees the way it crackles and causes him to crack and tremble, Kelly at the epicenter.

“No.” Ed whispers, knowing he has about ten seconds of introduction to shut the thing off or pass out or flee, he’s decided he doesn’t want to do this after all, he’ll be going back to his room even if he has to cry to get there. “No, no, no-” His next attempt at escape, turning off the music no longer an option, is to run. Kelly shoves him, pushes him into the middle of the stage, “no, _Kel, no_ , no,” and the first space in the instruments is given for a sung tune.

Ed is unable to help himself, lifting the microphone when Kelly prompts him, “no no no- n- ~ _come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly, away…~”_

It’s like stepping off a platform and out into the zero-gravity of the universe. Frightening, confronting, lonely. Stars far away, twinkling lights at the edges of his vision, reflected around a visor. The sound trapped inside a helmet, a fuzzy amalgamation of the chatter-filled comms. For the bar between the first and second lines, Ed is certain he’s going to collapse. Stage dive the bare half-meter from the stage to the floor of the mess hall where Kelly has retreated.

Looking up at him. Smiling. Bathed in a new wash of colors, golden hair gone red and orange, a flame so distant he can’t quite make her out, anymore.

He floats, weightless, for a few seconds, almost misses the next line. He catches himself and carries on, dragged into his own body and voice by the end of the shocked silence, the palpable _fuck, he can sing?_ Kelly is joined by Claire, the two swaying together, their confidence letting him look up, look around in shifts and scared glances.

Conversations resume, people cheer, people laugh, people begin to dance, giving Ed something to look at other than the backs of his eyelids or the back of the room or Kelly and Claire, singing with him below, ten times more enthusiastic than Ed. Isaac’s arms are shifting, computing what he’s seeing. Bortus, carrying an armload of drinks from the bar, and Yaphit circling his legs, yammering on. Michaels spinning Roue under her arm is the thing to get Ed into the swing of things, can’t believe he’d wanted to stop. He smiles, feels a new wave of what might be confidence but also maybe sick. That’s all part of it, he guesses- lifts his head, and by the end of the first verse, he’s walking along the stage, taking his jacket off so he’s in a black shirt and dress pants. A little classier than the Command blue.

John wolfwhistles, and Claire leans up to the edge of the stage, holding her golden scarf up for him to bend down for, slinging around his neck herself. As he’s about to stand up she pulls, bringing him off of the low platform, singing, _“~come fly with me, let’s float down to Peru~”_

She dances with him, together they make their way to where the rest of their friends are. Through the crew, going on with their fun as Ed had seen them when he’d first arrived. Ed feels like he doesn’t matter all too much to them, aiding his self-assurance to let go of the insecurity that reacts to his voice projecting through all the speakers in the room. All the way he’s singing, glad to be off of the stage in a way, nervous to be around them in a way, too. His nerves are put on the highest burn when Claire pushes him- much gentler than Kelly –and his back bumps into a familiar shape. A familiar voice lets out a shocked _“oh, fuck, sorry”_ , and a welcome set of hands catch him, right him.

He’s sure Claire was sending him somewhere else indiscriminately, so she can dance with Isaac, but _great, here’s Gordon_ , this _isn’t_ something Ed wanted.

Ed didn’t ask for a lot of the feelings his has.

Ed doesn’t _think_ about them- he refuses.

But it’s so easy to do things without thinking.

 _“~Come fly with me, let’s take off, into the blue~”_ he puts aside the surging, churning inside as best he can. Dances in what he hopes comes across as a joke. Gordon laughs at him, tries to imitate him, _“~once I get you up there, where the air is rarified…~”_

At some point behind him, Gordon points and laughs, then reaches out for Ed, grabbing on to the tips of Ed’s fingers as Ed steps away. Once he’s caught, Gordon regrips so he can hold Ed’s hand properly

Ed gets a moment to feel how sweaty and clammy his own hand is, how sweaty Gordon’s is too, before Gordon is trying to spin Ed around under his arm. It ends up in a tangle, the two of them stumbling and sidestepping, Ed laughing as he sings: _“~We’ll just glide…~”_

They release one another’s hands and just when Ed thinks he can breathe, Gordon grabs Ed’s other hand, the one on the microphone, and pulls it- Ed attached -until he’s in range.

Joining in when Ed sings, _“~oh-so starry-eyed...~”_

Clumsy, and between tripping and dancing and laughing at one another, they sing together.

 _“~Once I get you up there, I’ll be holding you so near~”_ And Gordon pauses, letting Ed go on, saying where the microphone won’t pick up:

“I swear I haven’t drank that much, I’m really bad at dancin’!” He has to talk over the music so Ed can catch it while he’s singing:

_“~You might hear, angels cheer, because we’re together,_

_“Weatherwise, it’s such a lovely day…~”_

Another verse passes, their voices slowly gaining a harmony- they’re almost on the same wavelength, the tune breaking into an instrumental.

Ed has always known Gordon cannot dance to save a life. And Ed is _better_ , but not _that much_ better, so it becomes a disaster of them laughing and Ed making fun of Gordon and Gordon losing his fucking mind over the steps of a waltz and then a simple box-step, following Ed around. Stumbling on his feed, Ed’s feet, the air. The lights turn pink and yellow and blue, washing the changes over their faces, through the crowd of crew members.

If Ed held the microphone any closer to his chest, the beat through the speakers would get ruined by his heart hammering against a tight vice that burns, fills him with hot air and makes him feel lighter. Nothing matters, nothing that isn’t right here, that isn’t Gordon. Himself and Gordon. Their dancing, their laughter, their sweaty hands that sometimes meet and link as Ed attempts to spin them around, tries to lead Gordon in a few steps until Gordon ultimately steps on Ed’s foot or on his own foot and they break apart.

Not too far, but far enough. A sharp sliver of space that looks and feels to Ed like an inch, is really a meter or so. More laughing, laughing, laughing, Ed starting to feel intoxicated despite not having a single drink.

He’s floating again, no longer scared or alone. Not looking his feelings in the eye, to avoid the confrontation- allowing himself to be, in this moment.

_“~Once I get you up there, where the air is rarefied…~”_

Ed nearly misses the cue, too busy watching Gordon’s mouth as he laughs, the stunned little smile and the way he sways in towards Ed to join in at the end of the line.

He can’t look away, now, their closeness too much of a dream or fantasy he doesn’t risk breaking. Gordon doesn’t break it either, and Ed believes that it’s due to Gordon never anticipating Ed’s gaze to be anything more than friendly. Ed catches the way Gordon looks at him in a second, an image, recorded and captured in his heart forever. For the song, the atmosphere in the room, Ed puts it down to the feel, the mood of the room. Tries not to take it too seriously but Gordon looks so charming in this light, from this perspective.

Ed lets himself play pretend. Until the end of this verse, he promises himself. Basks in Gordon looking down at him in the slight difference of their heights. The distance between them tiny, intimate at a stretch.

 _“~We'll just glide~”_ where they should stop, Gordon holds the note, takes it down a few steps. A quiet improvisation, sent as a serenade. Ed looks away, feels the heat of the smile, and hears Gordon’s hushed laughter as a prickling down his chest, into his stomach. He has to sing alone, Gordon still chuckling at himself, the riff and the joke of an blatant flirt having caught Ed completely off-guard, _“~absolutely petrified…~”_

Stars are in his eyes, blinded, all he can see is Gordon’s- the shift from deep blue to an orange that brings out the best of the color of them. A smile that goes gentle, drops the humor and the cloudy moment going to Ed’s head. And the threatened, tortured tiny voice in Ed’s head wonders: _had it been a joke?_

Ed misses the next couple of lines.

Finally, the stronger voice is back, screaming at him, this is real fucking life, and Ed knows he has to calm down before he oversteps. Before he does more than he’s already done, without thinking through rationally.

 _“~You may even hear angels cheer, ‘cuz we're together~”_ so, Ed starts his way back to the stage, the end of the song on its way, _“~weather-wise it’s just such a lovely day…~”_

The Orville’s spot at orbit faces away from the moon of the planet Ungar, is clear of Ungar itself, looking out of the mess hall’s windows. There are constellations outside, unfamiliar, stunning, washing the reflection of the room and from where Ed is standing, they all stand out in the stars. There is no way he can make out Gordon, in the warped and see-through vision on the windows of the mess hall. Jumping onto their makeshift stage and the sparkle of Claire’s scarf shimmering in the brighter lights that focus on the platform, Ed sings out to the stars:

_“~You just say those word, and we’ll beat the birds, down to Acapulco Bay…_

_“Oh, it’s perfect for a flying honeymoon, they say…_

_“Come fly with me let’s fly, let’s fly~_ ” along with the kicks in the music, he spins, spots the glittery projection of Claire’s scarf on the walls, takes the core of his confidence and pours it in, _“~pack up, let’s fly today!~”_

He holds the note a little longer than he’d meant to, belts it more than he’d needed to, to the cheers of the crew that go on, turn into claps and too-loud _“good job”_ s in his ears on his way back to his group. Dann jumps onstage, starting up a new tune that takes everyone’s attention. Claire is praising him like there’s no tomorrow as he gives her the scarf back, John saying _“shit, man, that was pretty cool”_ adding to the flushing on his cheeks, his neck.

Ed wants to get out of here, overly aware of what everyone says, of where Gordon is, of how obvious he’s being by not looking anywhere near him. What the fuck did he just do? He doesn’t want to know what he’ll see, what he’ll feel, if he looks in Gordon’s direction after whatever the fuck that was.

Pressed by all the pressure he’d rather run from than show, his first plan is just that: to run. Beat his retreat, fit the notion of a Captain who would rather let the crew do their own thing. Would rather sit by himself and do his reports. The ever-dutiful Captain, not a shut-in but not the most outgoing guy, either. Knowledgeable and studious. The labels that follow him, have given him his comfort over the years.

Running is far easier than having to face this. Casual settings, removing the walls he’d managed to put up to block one person in particular. And everything that just happened _had actually happened_ , so fast, Ed needs to sit in a quiet spot and think about what he’d done. Or not think at all, and keep poking at the moon’s readings.

“Can I go back to work now please-”

“Fuck no,” Kelly bars his way, “I wanna see you and Claire sing something from Guys and Dolls.” The way her face lights up- he can’t say no. He’s still a weak, in-love man.

If he could let these feelings of his go, he would have. He would’ve done it a long, long time ago.

Instead, he’s stuck here, at the whim of his stupid, brainless, weak heart that decides to go along with whatever. For all his intellect, Ed can be a pretty stupid person, out of a lack of self-control alone.

“I’ll go The Muppets and nothing more.”

“West Side Story.” She barters. Ed shakes his head, and Claire adds her chip:

“Phantom of the Opera?”

“I cannot do Phantom of the Opera without crying.”

“Wicked?” Kelly asks, overtaken by a much more enthusiastic Claire.

“ _Wicked_! Ed, please!”

Rolling his eyes, Ed tries to escape again.

“I will _not_ sing As Long As You’re Mine-”

“That’s not the only duet we could do?”

The sly tone Claire takes, the hinting in her words, gives Ed reason to pause. _Defying Gravity_ is a definite no, so what else could she be referring to? Going alphabetically down the list of songs he can remember, he gets to the end, and _there it is._

“ _No_ , no way.” Ed declares, already heading for the stage.

“Yes!” Claire is right behind him.

“Oh, _no_ ,” But he’s smiling, stepping up side-by-side with Claire onto the stage, smiling at Claire. Hiding under the perfect cover he’s perfected over years and years, as he speaks, “Gordon is gonna _hate_ this.”

“Why?”

“I sing it all the goddamn time.”

She starts up the opening of _Wonderful_ , a far shorter version than the original, mercifully, since Gordon can be heard causing a ruckus in the crowd:

“Nuh-uh! No! No _way_ , turn it off!!”

So Ed just starts.

_“~I never asked for this, or planned it in advance… I was merely blown here by the winds of chance…~”_

 

Time hits oh-two-hundred, a few hours until their shift, and the mess hall empties, the Beta shift swapping with the short-lived Gamma portion of their crew. The standby, of sorts, for the Orville.

After all his initial protesting, among the last of the Alpha crew to leave was Ed.

And Gordon.

Gordon walks him back to his quarters, their chatting running down the ways and feeding back, giving the impression that they’re completely alone on the ship, Ed with enough drinks in him to loosen his tongue. Not enough to turn him into an idiot- he needs more than three, to reach that point.

Twentieth-century music and the ‘ancient’ plays like Rent and My Fair Lady is what Ed keeps it to, Gordon a little too trashed and a little too easily distracted to go off on any tangent by himself. The heaviest heavyweight Ed has ever met, and he’s slogging along like a newborn horse.

And Ed doesn’t mention it but, despite all of Gordon’s drinking- Kelly’s too, for that matter -he had found the night fun.

Performing with Claire and sharing the Wizard’s lines with her on the fly, singing by himself, and singing that first with Gordon. As scared and giddy and humiliated as he feels every time he looks back on it, it _was_ worth it. He’d forgotten about his work almost completely. Never settled all the way into the air of the mess hall as the night wore on- sat on the outskirts, Gordon at his side, as they often find themselves doing. Tune after tune, few words shouted between them over music. Comments on the mishaps that became more frequent, in every new person to take the microphone. Laughter as the Beta crew started filtering in, usurping the trashed Alpha lot.

A snide whisper about their Beta Science Officer and his new haircut that Ed berated Gordon for, all jokes and _“that was rude, Gord, you had a mohawk once upon a time.”_ A heavy reminder of Ed’s unrequited feelings when Gordon had been approached by a Lieutenant from Engineering, Gordon dismissing them afte entertaining the idea for a minute or two. A hand on Ed’s arm that he shrugged off, when the only other Frank Sinatra song of the night, started up.

Kelly picked up one of the many songs Ed sung in the shower or lying on the couch or while doing washing; on a nicer day, she’d join in with what words she knew. On a worse one, she’d tell him to shut up.

_Fly Me to the Moon._

Once, it had been Ed’s favorite. Every time he’s heard it since his and Kelly’s split, each instance where he’s caught himself humming the tune or singing the words, there’s an acrid taste left in his mouth and he stops, does the first thing he can think of to distract himself.

Tonight, he’d looked at Gordon out of the corner of his eye, and didn’t think he’d mind singing it with him. Gordon was giving Ed space, hands in his lap. Pointedly not touching Ed and, that’s right, Ed had made it pretty clear: leave me alone. _Fly Me to the Moon_ blaring on. The cadence of whoever sung it had a scary echo to the both original and the way Ed felt he’d once done, dancing around the coffee table in his and Kelly’s apartment, her bright laughter from the bathroom.

How Ed had wanted to slot his open palm between Gordon’s twisting fingers, do something as bold as the singer’s voice, _“~in other words, please be true, to me…~”_

Ed looks at Gordon now, stopping in front of Ed’s door- stops short when Gordon turns to him. Sways a little. A hand on the wall by the door to keep himself sturdy. Gordon is so drunk, Ed feels like _he_ should be the one walking Gordon back.

He realizes, with a startle he tries not to show, that he’s been avoiding Gordon’s eyes, hasn’t met them since they’d danced together. Then, he hasn’t been spending much time with Gordon in general.

His heart aches. He should just go to bed, put this behind him for now. Never address it again and send it to the depths with all the other Gordon-related travesties he-

“Can I come in?”

Gordon’s question throws Ed for a loop.

Why would Gordon want to play videogames? Granted, this wouldn’t be the first time they’ve played through their off-shift time. Neither able to consider the mere idea of resting, let alone lie down and close their eyes for longer than a second. The social interactions of the night have left Ed exhausted, being _around Gordon_ has been more than he thought he could take, and spending another few hours with him? Alone?

Fuck that.

“I really don’t- Gord, we have shift in four hours, I don’t think I can handle a game of Grenan Explorer-”

“I- no, I mean, can…” As Gordon trails off, Ed presses a couple of buttons, unlocking his door. It hisses, slides open.

Gordon seems to lose what he was going to say. Whatever drunken argument he’d been forming to convince Ed to play Grenan Explorer or Fight-Night Nine is forgotten easily, an apologetic laugh bordering on shyness takes its place. “You’re right, yeah. Yeah, of course- _pff_ , what was I thinkin’, right?”

“Get some sleep. I swear, you’re fuckin’ tireless.”

“G’night, Ed.”

“Night.”

The door closes and Ed leans against it, considers having another drink. He _should_ sleep.

Sleeping alone- sleeping full stop –is not what he wants to do. A loneliness presses, seeps into every inch of him, and he regrets not inviting Gordon in, now. Company is better than no-one, even if it is Gordon.

Why had Gordon been so upset, about Ed not wanting to play videogames? They always play videogames, they spar every now and then. Ed hopes he’s not hurting Gordon, knows he’s being a bad friend by separating himself, putting in a void where they’d used to spend off-shift time hanging out. Gordon’s always been a dependent dude. Likes to have someone around at all times, a good contrast to Ed’s need for space. Their friendship has never been dependent on the time they physically spend together, though, which begs the question of Gordon’s reaction to Ed turning him down. Initially, before the humor and self-dismissal, Gordon’s whole face had fallen to a dismal appearance. As if Ed had cruelly snatched something out of his hands before he’d gotten a good look at what he’d been holding.

What could Ed have done? That’s not how a drunk Gordon reacts to rejection, even if it’s coming from Ed. Ed has told Gordon to stop doing _plenty_ of things while drunk. He’s sure of it. Gordon is never all that bothered by Ed turning down the offer to hang out- the past couple of weeks are testament to that. So what is Ed missing?

From the look in Gordon’s eyes and the way he’d worded his question- the way Gordon had tried to express himself and backed down and shut himself up and _oh fuck,_ the dramatist in Ed- the romantic, the one that hopes and begs for a chance –takes Ed’s panic and runs with it, _oh, no, Gordon hadn’t wanted to play video games, hadn’t he_ -

Ed’s tipsy, tilted judgment says it’s a great idea to run back out into the hall, so he does just that.

Of course, Gordon is gone.

For a stupid, _stupid_ second, Ed considers going after him.

It’s late. Gordon was pretty smashed. Ed himself would definitely do something dumb. Is already doing something dumb, _if he hadn’t wanted to play video games, maybe he wanted to kiss_ being the logical leap he’s made.

Besides, Gordon let it go, didn’t he?

“Ed,” he tells himself, firm and loud as he keys in his code and sulks back into his room, “go to bed.”

He does not.

 

Truly, Ed has had a _thing_ for Gordon since they first met. Ed falls hard and fast and he never lets go, he’s aware of this, it happens all the time. It happened with his childhood pet, and when she died- Buddy, fifteen year old Labrador, may her soul rest I peace –Ed had been distraught. Didn’t talk to anyone for days.

When a mission fails, Ed needs some time to himself, to go over all the things the universe has lost- reasons how much of it could have been a result of his actions and judgments. His attachment to the issue is what eats at him, sometimes makes him a better leader with better judgments than others would in highly emotional situations- sometimes, leads him into a depression for hours, days, or even weeks after a failure.

When Kelly left, Gordon can testify for how shut-off he became. How little he talked. How little he wanted to think and move, how he saw any strain but the one work brought as pointless.

Since he and Kelly broke off their marriage, it has all been coming back. Those feelings, the ones he fought so hard to forget, knowing he never would be able to. At first, Ed thought _“I’m just vulnerable and sad, and Gordon is the only one being nice to me”_ , on the dead end of his failed relationship. He tried to distance himself from those feelings over that time he spent at Gordon’s, and then his Captaincy provided the perfect excuse. A work relationship is such a good reason to be distant. A Captain-worker relationship isn’t the best idea in any case, but _fuck_ -

It’s still Gordon.

And Ed still loves him.

And, recently, Ed hasn’t known what to make of him. In part, that’s down to his determination to not think about Gordon at all, in that sense.

But, in the end, he’s a Captain. He hears rumors, he’s not above what goes on within the ship- _his ship_ -and certainly not out of the loop of his Alpha-shift bridge crew. The finger on the pulse of the ship’s wider-spread chatter has become Bortus, over the term of their service together. Bortus, who somehow manages to both listen in to everything and not feel compelled to keep his lips sealed.

A good neutral party.

And yet, even Bortus appears sworn in on this one new secret, the one Ed has come to know surrounds Gordon. Any other time, he’d be concerned. Gordon keeping things from Ed almost always end in a minor crisis. Something’s off about this one, though, and does Ed have hope for something? Is Ed just overanxious? Has he eaten enough, is he hydrated- now his self-talk is starting to sound like Claire. Not even Ed knows what it is. It’s a fun game to play to pass the time, when you’ve had anxiety as long as Ed has, until you’re getting into bed alone and wondering if it’s always going to be an empty space you’re closing your eyes to and opening them to again three-to-seven hours later.

Then, the ever-sharpening stick of anxiety is not so fun. That’s where it becomes less of a hungry-hungry-hippo game, and more of a snapping crocodile chasing him down a muddy riverbank.

Because what is Gordon to Ed, beyond a friend? That’s the crux of it, and brings back the question:

If- _if_ –Gordon had _not_ been wanting to play videogames and was in fact aiming to do something more-than-friendly with Ed, why did he let it go so easily? The smart answer would be because he respected Ed’s space. Or, he recognized how under-the-influence he was. Or, even, Gordon himself decided he didn’t yet feel comfortable with crossing that boundary.

Fuck. What the hell is Ed thinking- how has he even come to let himself think this way?

“Computer, where is Claire Finn?”

She’s probably in bed by now, though the computer proves him wrong:

_“Doctor Claire Finn is in the medical bay.”_

“Of course.”

 

 

 

**DAY 25**

***Henry Park's Log Notes:***

***Sso System. Union wanted to see if system has Dysonium.**

**Because of course they do.***

 

It has been a three minute walk down to medbay and Ed is getting nowhere on this _‘clear my head of Gordon Malloy so I can function like a human being’_ bullshit. Another useless tactic he’s labeled, a bandaid over a bigger problem. Ed’s the winner at doing that, isn’t he- Kelly would scream him deaf if she knew he’s still up to this crappy way of dealing with his problems. Claire tries her best, but Ed is pretty resistant to outside parties telling him how to get through life. Most of that comes from his parents, how they raised him. Overbearing, unbearably involved. Ed became resolute to do things his own way, on his own volition.

He has his partitions and his boxes, the people he has to be and the things he has to do. What he does that isn’t strictly ‘necessary’ or ‘clever’, and then the things he does that are prioritized. Work, being the main thing, just about the only thing he keeps up-there on the list.

Claire calls it compartmentalizing.

Ed calls it living smart.

Then, Claire verbally slaps him with reasons why it’s not smart at all, and hardly classifiable as _living_ , and Ed should _“work on it already, you’re a grown man. Work with me on this, Ed.”_

Ed has a habit of labeling things. Himself, his roles, his schedules. By effect, he has ended up labelling his- few, painfully few –hobbies as dumb. Silly, pointless, useless, any other term that would enable him to pass them off as something he spent little time and effort on, should anyone find out and decide to judge him for it. It’s a flawless defense. Might not have been the best thing for Ed to have internalized into his self-image, in retrospect: _if I don’t think I’ve done good, you can’t hurt me if you don’t think I’ve done good_.

Too bad that way of thinking never melded over his deeply embedded insecurity. At least it lessens the blow, somewhat. When Claire says _“Ed, I see you trying, but you really have to make a conscious effort that is continuous over time,”_ Ed can trust her and agree with her and take his notes, and on the inside he can tell himself _“well at least I haven’t cried once this week, so progress is progress, right?”_

Regardless, Ed feels like a spy, racing down towards the medbay, carrying all of his flipbooks within his unzipped jumper’s folds. Convinced that if he’s found with the little moving cartoons he’s drawn, accumulating over his time as Captain, he would die of embarrassment.

So, of _fucking_ course, he trips on the opening door as he enters medbay, his quiet greeting to Claire turning into a yelp, the ground rushing up to meet him. The flipbooks go everywhere, Ed letting them go to catch himself.

Claire is in her party dress- hasn’t changed since Ed saw her last, four hours ago. She shouts, concerned, rushing over the help him as he hurries to pick them up, ignoring his protests, getting a look at what he’s dropped. The ten-by-ten centimeter notepads covered end to end with animated characters, their friends from this very ship, doing whatever Ed wanted to draw them doing.

Another stupid hobby of his, alongside playing the piano and singing in the shower and swinging sabers at holographs until he can’t feel his arms, each praise and positive return to each feeling like a taunt, a cynical play. This is no different.

 _This_ hurts more; one by one his vents have been discovered and talked about, brought into the light. Talla knows where to find him on Deck F, John often hounds him for his opinion on his calculations, he’s interrupted by Isaac more and more often in Claire’s lab during a game of Tridimensional chess, and everyone and their dog knows that he spends a substantial period of time in a fighting sim every week or so. Drawing may be one of his last, secret stress relievers that doesn’t feel invaded by the people around him.

Claire, sifting through the flipbooks- Ed doesn’t want it to become what the other aspects of his stress relief methods have become. A kind-of novelty, onboard the Orville, crewmembers stopping him to ask questions about them like Ed is some sort of expert when, in actuality, he’s been using them as a sort-of coping mechanism for so long that his proficiency might be higher than he’s cared to realize.

Whatever helps him get out of bed, day to day, to face his life and his choices.

“Oh…”

Ed closes his eyes, clutching all the ones he’d managed to gather, waiting for her to laugh. “ _Oh_ , this is cute,” and as Ed’s eyes snap open and refocus, he sees her holding the one of Claire kissing Issac in the rain on the bridge.

And then one of Ty practicing piano. They’re the ones that must have stood out to her, but she doesn’t stop there. She whispers _“are these all…”,_ starts to pick each one up, flip through to let the animation go in a flurry of paper. Bortus and Topa, practicing sword-fighting in a simulation that Ed had sat in on, assisted with. John and Dann playing footsie under a table in the mess hall. The tired bartender pouring out a drink for a lonely looking character. Yaphit, going flat and rising up into his usual form over and over, the tiny music notes that float and move across the top of the pages implying that it’s a dance.

Marcus, a slow smile spreading over his face while he reads a book. He flips a page, and Ed knows he’s captured the excitement Finn has seen on her own child’s face.

“Can I…” He looks up at her, captivated by the way she’s flicking through every single one and the way she reacts. Her indication towards the ones he’d grabbed, a majority of the flipbooks he holds in his hands- she wants to see them, too. Reluctantly, he hands them over.

She must understand- and, looking back, why had Ed been so worried? This is Claire. Claire, who sees right away: it’s not just what would be cool or cute from a general perspective. It’s what _Ed_ thinks is cool or cute. Because even if Ed tells himself it’s a pointless way to pass his time, he does pour a lot of time into them.

Sits alone and thinks of what had happened that day, anything worth spending an hour or two sketching out and lining in pen, wanting to try and capture and remember the way he’d felt, at the time.

Works hard to put into the paper as much of the real-life depth and emotions as he can.

Stacks them all up in a drawer as soon as they’re done, telling himself _“back to work”_ , saying he’s just done it for fun, it’s no big deal.

To Claire, they seem like an awfully big deal. And, to Claire, the truth must come out, in that Ed really does think a big deal of the events he decides to draw.

There’s one or two more of Dann, at least five for every member of their bridge crew, old and new. Few of John in his current posting, muttering over numbers and tapping at his PADD- Ed had added blue highlights to that, to show the reflections on his skin. He’s proud of it, being the only one to feature color. A fair number show Alara: yanking doors open, suplexing big rocks or other crew members, sitting in the Captain’s chair with lights moving over her and changing her shadows. Opening a literal jar of pickles for Ed, who claps with a comical expression, eyes pointing different ways. One in particular makes Claire snort, as she watches Alara being chased by a clown down a hall, Talla popping out of a random room and coat-hangering the clown, then carrying Alara bridal-style away from her downed pursuer.

Ed’s _really_ proud of that one.

Then, the ones he’s not so proud of. The ones at the bottom of the drawer.

Kelly, tucking hair behind her ear. Kelly drinking wine, Kelly punching a Krill soldier in the face, Kelly sitting in her chair from the view-point of where Ed’s chair is. Blinking slowly and tilting her head, the slow slip of her hair showing a painstaking attention to detail.

“Oh, Ed, these are all beautiful.”

“They’re just silly things, I...”

“No, really." She picks one up- Ty and Marcus playing a video game, jumping around and hitting one another, speech bubbles flitting in and out, filled with illegible characters. "They’re great… Can I keep this one?"

Ed shrugs, finds the other six of her kids and lets her take them, too.

She’s smiling at them, when she asks: "so, none of Gordon?"

"Wh- _what_? Hah, _no_." His aim for casual is off by a mile, words coming out breathless and aghast.

He takes the ones of Kelly Claire is handing him and as his arms shift, his hoodie’s traitorous cover allows a few that feature Gordon to fall out. "Oh _fuck_ ," but as he goes to grab them, he drops more- five, eight, "shit, no _no no_ ," more and more fall out of his hoodie and all over the floor between them faster than he can sweep them back up, ends up making the hem of his shirt into a pouch to take all of his flipbooks back, "shit, _fuck_ , shit."

Claire laughs, can’t seem to help it. Once Ed has bundled them up, he all but sprints into her office.

She returns to the analyses she and Henry were on before Ed arrived, and at Henry’s _“what the fuck just happened”,_ Ed grits his teeth. He pours the flipbooks onto the couch, fishing out his pens and pencils from a drawer under the the table. Listens, as Claire explains and Henry must crack a test-tube on the table, laughing so hard he hardly makes any noise. It seems infections, Claire giggling again, and Ed has to smile.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up!" His mortified shout carries piteously from Claire’s private lab, setting the pair off further.

 

Hours later, Henry brings Ed something to eat. Still in his floral suit and crooked green bowtie and his smile that is sweet, knowing. Doesn’t have to lean over Ed, doesn’t have to see the flipbook he’s penning out to know that Ed is plotting out his dramatic, humiliating entrance to the medbay earlier.

Henry has learnt too much from Claire.

“Henry, damnit.” Ed sighs, running a hand through his hair. Like petting a dog, Henry bops him on the top of his head.

“You’ll be okay, Cap.” Is all Ed gets out of him, trying to ignore the ominous vibes those words and that smile gives him.

 

Before he leaves, he makes sure he has all of the flipbooks of Gordon. Counting thirteen, he goes on his way. Says a quiet farewell to Claire and Henry, full of anticipation for the reaction message or call he’ll get.

The next time Claire goes into her office, she’ll find the two short flipbooks he’d left on her desk.

One that depicts her and Isaac performing a section of _Singing in the Rain_ in front of the actual set, rather than in the Orville mess hall.

The other, a therapy-chair setup between her and Ed, features Claire’s advice writing out as she speaks, and Ed then going and doing exactly what he’d told him not to do.

She’ll enjoy both of them, though he doesn’t doubt she’ll be psychoanalyzing the way Ed drew himself, in addition to his text-choice: _“Ed, stop jumping off of cliffs, it’s bad for your mental health.”_

 

 

 

**DAY 26**

***Sam Michaels’s Log Notes:***

***I could not care where the fuck we are at this point,**

**I am not paid enough for this bullshit.***

 

“So you love him.” Sam taunts, dodging one of Ed’s swipes.

The next one comes faster but she expected it, deflecting and countering with a jab of her own.

“I did _not_ say that,” Ed is panting, his next swing coming on a diagonal downswing, Sam catching, parrying it, taking a step forward and driving him one back.

“Well _I’m_ tellin’ ya,” She forces him another step, watches each of his attempts at counters, hawkeyed and keyed up from his tension, the level he’s at right now, “He loves _you_.”

“I- I _know_ that.”

Ed falters, swings his saber absently in his right hand. Although Sam doesn’t take her eyes off it, she can read the lie plain as day. He obviously _does not know_ and Sam really isn’t here to lead him into the light of Gordon’s love, or whatever. She doesn’t care. Couldn’t give to shits- in fact, the more wrought up for Gordon he is, the more fun Sam has when they spar. She isn’t going to say something, not going to say anything else.

They’ll reengage in their fighting, one of them will get hurt, the winner will take the other to sickbay and that’ll be that.

That’s how this works. How it’s been working.

Except Ed’s next swipe is weak, and Sam is- _fucking damnit_ –Sam is going to say something:

“Listen.” She bats at him, and he raises his saber to fend it off in the nick of time. “He _clearly likes you_ ,” her follow-up is a little harder, Ed meeting it, drawing back out of his own head, “so just _get the fuck over yourself,_ maybe?”

Ed is not on good terms with himself, and that’s annoying, to Sam. It is also obvious to him- _getting over himself_ is a tough ask, because he hardly wants to cooperate with himself, sometimes. Sam makes sure her next question hits where it hurts: “Are you over Kelly?”

It is chased by a flurry of attacks, Sam stepping her way around his right side to spin him, get him following her lead. Nearly sidetracks him, as he aims to answer the question rather than falling prey to the malicious thoughts he’s only just been starting to let go of, recognizing that _Kelly isn’t the problem, here_.

“Yes.” He manages. Sam comes at him again, he’s well and truly on the retreat.

“Then!”

Her attack lands a hit, another, their low power settings doing little to give him breathing space, to lessen the sting. “Get the fuck back out there! Ask him on a date! Give him fuckin’ flowers or some shit!”

 “I don’t even know what I want from him!” _Or myself_ , the unspoken end of his shout is something she feels. Watches it burn into his resolve, brings his next bout of slices at an incredible pace. Once glances across her vambrace, and she dares to throw her arm out, knocking his saber off-track at the risk of being left one-handed.

“Yah, ‘cuz you’re too cowardly to even stop and think about it!”

She’s heard him say that. He’s asked it before, kicked it aside just as soon as he’d brought it up: _what does Ed want from himself_ , and _what could he do with a relationship_ \- two poignant questions he dances about. The two Sam has started to think about in terms of her own life, as she nears her twenty-fifth birthday, the first quarter of her life passing her by in what is starting to look more like a flash than the slideshow of memories it had been a few years ago.

What could a relationship do for Ed? The question burns, the two going back and forth on a few attacks, Ed’s inner conflicts snapping out along his movements, slamming Sam left, right, and center. How does it fit into work but, further, should Ed consider a relationship, in the position he’s in? Job-wise and mentality-wise, it isn’t the best idea. Is Ed prepared to open himself up to someone in that way, and is he willing to brave the risks that come with it?

And, besides, Ed _loved_ Kelly. He _loves Kelly_.

What the fuck does he want with Gordon, then, if the person he loved- _loves_ –ended up in such a way, their relationship going to such a bad state? If he was that way with Kelly, and they ended the way they did, then what’s the chance that Ed will let it happen again?

Sam, a smart and rational person, knows that Ed is self-aware enough to not make the same mistake. ‘Once bitten twice shy’ is a power that goes both ways, and Ed has been riding the extreme of it, paralyzed by the toxin of the bite, in a sense. Sam is also an outside party to Ed’s self-talk. Although he’s resistant to sitting down and talking it out with him, how he does with Claire, Sam is seeing the progress she’s making with him

It’s tiring work, and it doesn’t seem worth her time when they get into strops such as this and she knows she’s going to come away sore, covered in burns to take to Claire and shoulders to ice.

The look on Gordon’s face, if he ever catches them leaving the simulator together, is more than enough to motivate her into asking Ed then and there for their next time. Ed misses the look he gets, and when Sam is on the other side, leaving the sim with Gordon, it’s clear that Ed has the same, if not similar, expression.

Clashing into Ed’s saber mid-swing and dragging, pushing against Ed until he has to relent, she lands a kick to the leg holding his weight. It sends him staggering- watching him spiral into the thoughts she’d read, the powerful questions that fucked up his concentration, she kicks out again. Stops it as best as she can, by presenting a new question: “what about last night?”

“What, the singing?” Ed laughs at himself, and Sam nearly cuts a patch of curly hair at the top of his head clean off.

They don’t bother with helmets.

It really isn’t a clever thing to do. Sam knows Ed wears one with Gordon, she wears one with Gordon herself, so it isn’t borne from an excessive amount of trust, nor an acknowledgement of skill. Gordon has too much trust in medicine to warrant an awareness that what he’s fighting is still a friend he has to deal with after the fight.

Gordon is also the kid of friend who could break your arm and that’s that, you’re lifelong best friends. Sam is allowed to say that because she’s the one whose arm Gordon broke.

“Shut up with that shit.” She huffs, not out of breath. Unlike Ed, who has been going all out and has won practically all their rounds so far, and _shit_ , she wonders what time it is, whether her Gamma shift is on yet. Sam is doing a pretty damn good job about distracting him from the rest of the world outside their simulator. But, semi-healthy emotional venting or no, she knows Ed will be disappointed if she misses her shift.

Sam would get caught dead admitting it: she hates to disappoint Ed. Ever since he won her respect on Tulo 17, she’s hated that she makes an effort to be on-time to every Gamma shift. _Makes an effort_ , on every task he asks her to undertake, from doing a record check on a ship they pass, out on the outskirts of Union-explored space, to trying to beat the snot out of his face, like she’s doing presently.

And, since she’s supposed to be ‘beating the snot out of his face’ as a form of distraction- when, really, they both know this an exercise in getting Ed to have therapy outside of the controlled environment of Claire’s lab –she prods him further: “you two have been actin’ weird all day.”

“We’ve been acting weird all month-”

“Yah, but. Not _that_ kind’a weird.”

Ed’s way of denying it is getting her tempo off by going for a strong upward swipe that she has to fuck her whole posture up for, and then metaphorically whooping her into the ground until she steps outside of the circle first, losing yet again.

Seventeen to zero, Ed’s point. Now she’s sweating, and they’re smiling at each other, finally. “Admit it to yourself, and it’ll be a million times easier for everyone. But for you, most importantly.”

“Admit what?” And Sam rolls her eyes, his grin insufferable. “Shut up, Sam.” He says, instead of _thanks for literally and consensually beating some sense into me._

She knew it had meant something. From what Roue told her, Ed had asked for Gordon’s opinions several times completely unprompted, had done his walk-by of their dashboard twice. A sharp increase from the minimal engagement that started partway through the month.

“Now, come on,” she lifts her saber again, on guard, “and don’t go for the balls next time, that’s just bad manners”

 

 

 

**DAY 26**

***Gordon Malloy's Log Notes:***

***Roxar's Belt, outer edge of the Gallant System.**

**Rescue mission, vs scrappers. Fuck.**

**Now it's an X-Class neutralization mission.**

**I retract my earlier fuck for a brief restatement:**

**Double Fuck.***

 

He means to do something about the whirlwind of feelings revolving around Ed piecing every part of his past with Gordon and coming to terms with the fact that he is _very in love_ , and, may the universe strike him dead he’s going to do something about it.

First Claire, then Michaels- two perfectly timed shoves in the right direction.

He means to do it after their next shift-

Naturally, they’re hit with an emergency at two minutes to go.

Ed, after taking a moment to clear his head of the frustration, decides to lead the boarding party onto this scrapper ship that highlights on Ed’s system: _Class-X criminality, to be neutralized with evidence, Moort couple,_ and details, details, details.

There go his fucking dinner plans, then.

A Class-X criminal definitely means a firefight and Moorts imply a technology outside of the Union’s grasp, though hopefully the holey ship and its degrading core has taken care of the worst of it. Either way, it’s an indirect Direct Order to at least get eyes on the wanted persons, so Ed calls for radiation combat suits and for Talla to bring her top four officers. Gordon is needed, to fly them through the thick asteroid field the scrappers managed to get themselves stuck up in.

His gut aches, says _“shoot the ship down.”_ But Ed looked to Gordon, and he knew he had to do it the right way. He had to know for sure.

In the criminal file, the two Moorts are not noted in any known scrapper circles- no links at all to the quote-unquote _profession_ , spacecraft identification aside. The single-sex species tends to be mistrustful of all other lifeforms, including those who share their genetics. So few in number that they keep to themselves without exception. To encounter them in a pair is equally deadly and fascinating.

Alongside Ed is Bortus and Talla and her few Security Officers, and Gordon at the helm, steering them through the spinning rocks easily. Chakravathi is among the Talla’s Sec group, and Ed spares her a nod while running through his plan of action with Talla.

She will lead the main party through the ship while Ed and Bortus go for the bridge from beneath, the front of the scrapper’s decently-sized cruiser showing the least lifesigns on Isaac’s scans that came up shoddy at best.

Moort technology. What can they do, but go in blind?

Sure enough, the  thing is also armed to the teeth with weapons well out of the Union’s sphere of tech, so Ed puts out the secondary directive to take anything that looks advanced, weaponized or not.

Gordon lands them perfectly in the open cargo bay, is first out with Talla shadowing him, temporary-use space suits on. They pressurize the bay with a charger- a power-pack that gives the systems enough energy to put up a shield against the vacuum of the void. The pack of Ensigns stay tight to Talla’s back as they jog out of the shuttle, Kelly’s heavy reminder, _“they haven’t been stationary for long, and Isaac’s ground-readings say you’ve got ten minutes until that engine goes critical”_ in their comms.

“Let’s go,” he thumps Bortus on the back and leads the way along the bowels of the ship, feels Bortus’s return hit, a good-luck of sorts. Talla has already torn through the auto-locked door on her side, triggering the entire bay to release and open the internal doors.

They leave Gordon behind at the shuttle but something tells Ed they’re being followed, all the way through the whirring engine rooms that feature a scarily bastardized drive core that hums and heats Ed’s suit on the way up the hull. It doesn’t leave him, the stalking sensation, easing somewhat as he and Bortus reach the clusterfuck of hissing pipes they hurry through on their way upward towards the bridge. Fiberglass ladders, the floors protected in some sort of carbon fiber matting. Better for silent footsteps. Ed doesn’t know if it’s better for him or better for whatever else is on this ship.

 _“Ed,”_ Talla’s stone-cold tone comes through, _“back of the ship is secured, we’re moving forward. How’re you going?”_

“It’s a fucking maze down here, how about we meet half-” His whisper cuts short, ducking down and motioning for Bortus to do the same when he hears a voice outside of the comm. Bortus points in the direction of the sound. His two pointer fingers press together, split apart, and signal two directions.

Ed nods, and heads down the way Bortus indicated, checking over his shoulder and just catching Bortus jump a pipe and turn a corner, out of sight.

_“You good?”_

“Never mind. Found the bridge- Talla,” There’s a struggle as Ed catches a scrapper around the neck from behind, taking them down in an instant. Kalvian, a short-lived biped renounced for short tempers and killing sprees, but not a Moort, not what Ed needs, “as soon as you get to the main hold, head back. Do a sweep but keep it light. We’re gonna have to get outta here fast.”

_“Copy that.”_

“And stick together-” Ed hears a chink of metal on metal behind him, whirls around, arms up and ready, PM in its holster. He’d be stupid to draw attention to his location, down here, where wriggle-room and orientation aren’t his friends.

Bortus has caught the scrapper who’d snuck up on him, is crushing them down to the ground.

Another Kalvian. Ed turns, keeps on his way, the telltale thud of a body and Bortus’s silent tap on the shoulder letting him know that they’re all clear under the bridge. He smirks- “the last thing we need is someone getting’ stabbed in the back.”

The knife the scrapper had been holding is dangled in front of his face by Bortus. There’s a line along the serrated edge that he can hear when he pulls it towards his ear. The white bar gives off a crackling, a buzz of power.

One touch to the right pipe, and they’d both be fried like lasers on a deflector shield.

_“Something tells me you almost got stabbed in the back.”_

That’s classic Moort technology. Electricity- compounded in a way the Union is yet to conceive.

Ed regards the padded flooring, the grates of metal overhead.

A ship made of metal. The perfect powerkeg, an environment designed to carry electrical currents, prime for booby-traps. Stealthy by nature, the Moorts on board are obviously prepared for something to infiltrate their ship.

Luck is far from their side. Ed hopes they haven’t been found out already, irrational as that hope may be.

“I might yet…”

_“Captain?”_

“Change of plans. I’m sending Bortus to you,” he says, and feels another tap, and another check over his shoulder sees Bortus off, following back down the maze-like path they’d followed, “before the bridge, two length-ways halls cross the ship. Meet him at the port side of the second one, and then head back down to the loading bay. I’ll come back through the bottom deck. Have Gord with the shuttle ready to go, and- keep off the grates on the floor. These weapons have a unique charge, and I don’t doubt they have some other system built in against intruders.”

_“Got it. And if you’re incapacitated?”_

Ed rolls his eyes at her mocking quality through their connection, hears the muted firing of her plasma gun. There’s no way he’d get away with a _“then leave me,”_  let alone an _“I’ll be fine.”_

He pinpoints his access point above, moves through a few tight squeezes to reach the grate. She laughs, another fire of her gun coming through: _“you’re a genius, Ed, love your stuff.”_

“Okay, okay.”

_“Chakravarthi will meet you at the middle level of the bridge, deck two- Bortus will lead you both back, I’ll tell him the fastest way.”_

“Aye aye, Captain.” He teases, wriggling his way up between ladder-like structures of piping, pressing one of the floor plates up, the light through the holes having remained unchanged for the duration of his conversation with Talla. No one should be here. Even so, he pulls his gun, holding it close. There could always be something Ed is missing.

Cautiously, he climbs out of the flooring and lowers the metal grate without a noise to alert any nearby scrappers. He keeps to the shadows. Voices at normal volume come from the bridge, so whoever it is mustn’t be aware of the Union infiltration on their ship. The language isn’t Moorn, isn’t Kalvian. A constant set of vowels, grumbled, set deep at the back of a throat. He can think of one species that has the speech pattern and the sound quality, and it is not a good one.

Ed glances around the corner he’s picked to snipe from, getting a read on what he’s facing.

Just as he feared, the bridge’s ghostly lighting reveals three Autors, the grey, lumpy backs and mountainous faces a stark difference to the smooth-skinned, small, lithe Kalvians Ed and Bortus had encountered.

Autors are notorious to the Union, in that they do not take kindly to attempts at establishing peace, and their skins are impervious to plasma fire; the Union’s number-one projectile of choice.

Ed holsters his gun.

This just keeps getting better.

“Talla.”

None of the Autors stop what they’re doing, and her hum of a reply matches his, quiet as possible. “You dealing with any Autors up there?”

_“Shit? Uh- ho just Kalvians, couple of Form-Full Gelatins.”_

Ed swears under his breath. _“Why, what is it?”_

“They’re not here. Our Class-X guys.”

_“What, you haven’t found any Moorts?”_

“There are signs of their tech-”

_“Same here, but we-”_

Ed almost loses his cover, as a familiar song crackles into his ear:

_“~Where are those happy days, they seem so hard to find…~”_

He doesn’t even need to check the comms badge to know it’s coming from Gordon’s channel. Talla is snapping, _“comms off, Gordon, fuck”,_ and Gordon is whining, _“if I’m gonna die I’m gonna go out to ABBA_ ”, and Kelly growls _“no one is going to die”,_ her words hitting Ed with some sort of bad omen. Ed hates that he wishes he’d taken on this mission by himself. Not only are the all in danger, it was Ed’s call as a Captain to follow the X-Class signpost and board a soon-to-explode ship, when they could’ve sat back and watched the drive core go critical, put down the deaths of the Moorts with a lower degree of sureness.

But, then, maybe the Moorts aren’t here, and Ed would have filed a false closure on one of the Unions top cases. It’s a real debacle that Ed shouldn’t be beating himself up over right at this exact moment in time.

“Kel,” he asks, hearing a hum from her, “time?”

_“Six and a half minutes.”_

Fucking time-crunches. Taking a deep breath to cool himself, he takes another chance, evaluating the bridge and its occupants.

Autors, their long, grumbly words, poking at their control panels. _And no. Fucking. Moorts_. There isn’t much Ed can do, for that. The marks of Moorts are obvious in the charged weapons, the electrics that are added hodge-podge to the ship. Either they have been here and have left, or they’re still on the ship. If Ed can know the Moorts are onboard, he and the landing party and leave, letting the ship to its natural death.

To find that out, he’ll need access to the main panels.

And time is running out.

And three fucking large Autors stand between him and those main panels.

 _“~Whatever happened to our love… I wish I understood…~”_ Agnetha’s heavenly voice is singing- the one saving grace to Ed’s situation.

 _“Kelly.”_ Talla pleads.

A pause, allowing Ed to begin formatting a good plan of action that involves getting past these Autors, investigating where the Moorts who are supposed to inhabit this ship have gone, all within their ever-thinning timeframe.

_“~It used to be so nice, it used to be so good…~”_

_“I’ll allow it.”_ Kelly says, playful, _S-O-S_ playing on. Talla’s groan is punched through by a few more plasma shots. The chorus hits. Too much noise- Ed loses his concentration, staring up at the openness of the bridge and forgetting what he’d wanted to do.

“Quiet.”

That is all Ed has to say and they stop, though Gordon leaves his music on. The volume goes down a few notches, which Ed appreciates.

The bridge is visible from the upper decks, the third one up being the one he knows Talla will be on- the one Chakravarthi will meet him at.

 _“Tell Chakravathi to get here asap,”_ Ed orders, hears it carried out off-comm, _“Gord, hook up a relay to the bay systems, I’m gonna need Isaac.”_

 _“What am I to do, Captain?”_ Isaac’s smooth, comforting voice comes through, Kelly patching him into the comms system.

Ed slides into the light of the bridge’s high front-facing windows, back pressed to the wall, and lowers himself to a crouch. His foot hits a piece of debris and, after checking that he’s still going unnoticed, Ed picks up the scrap metal.

“I’ll send you a shipwide scan, and I need you to look for any Moort lifesigns. Let me and Talla know immediately.”

_“Yes, Captain.”_

He breathes out, long and slow until his chest hurts. Locks onto his target: a white-light shining through the sheath strapped over the back of the closest Autor.

Ed needs to get to the panels, and the Autors are in the way. He has to do what needs to be done.

 _“Ed,”_ Talla predictably comes back, picking up on Ed’s ordering for Chakravarthi to get to him, _“You’re not thinking of doing what I think you’re doing.”_

Not bothering to respond, Ed creeps forward, down the single step that takes him into the ring of sorts formed by the forward windows and the upper decks looking down. Breathing out, then in, he lobs the metal scrap in his hand over the Autors’ heads, and starts sprinting. The balls of his feet catch him, keeping his steps light. No covers for the metal floor, up here.

The Autors are all turned away, their grumbles speeding up. One scratches its head in confusion.

_“~When you’re gone- how can I even try- to go on…~”_

Two quick steps and Ed launches himself at the closest Autor, taking the knife from its sheath as he makes contact. The Autor doesn’t stagger, barely bends under his weight- Ed briefly lets the notion of _fuck fuck fuck, this really was a shit idea_ come and go, springing off of the Autor’s back when it spins, landing on top of the main dashboard.

The lights below him stutter, keys clicking and pressing under him as he jumps to dodge the first, lumbering swipe by the smallest of the three Autors, a little more mobile than the other two, way more talkative. It brings its arms up to crush down on the panels thereby destroying Ed’s height advantage, but is stopped by a hysterical grumble and a firm shove from the biggest. The remaining one reaches for him, and Ed engages it with a little less safety than he should, knowing it’s the one whose knife he holds. Ed unthinkingly trying to grapple with its jagged arm to bring it closer, close enough for him to strike. He gets enough of the Autor’s attention and that’s all he needs- ensuring he’s clear, he slams the knife down into the hand outstretched to grab and crush him.

He’s seen plenty of videos in his Species class at Union Point to know: you do not let yourself get caught in the hands of an Autor.

 _“~When you’re gone- though I try, how can I, carry on~”_ backtracks the jerking and convulsing Autor. The piercing shriek of their fellow breaks the other two Autors out of their argument. The little one points at Ed, letting out more grumbles at a frenzied rate, softened by _“~you seem so far away, though you are standing near~”,_ and Ed reckons Gordon pumped up the volume a little.

On one hand, great. All the more motivation to get these last two Autors pinned. On the other, he does appreciate being able to hear what he’s doing when he’s in combat with something that can literally kill him in a second.

_“~You make me feel alive, but something died, I fear…~”_

“Yeah!” Ed shouts to the tetchy Autors, swiping at them with the knife, “how do you like that?!” The smaller one steps forward over the fallen mass of rock while the taller one moves back, its tiny eyes wide. Ed tries to not let that phase him, deciding to focus on one thing at a time- the smaller Autor is keen to take him on, grabbing for him.

Ed attacks again, is stopped mid-swipe, “oh, shit.”

His right arm is caught between its massive mits and, instead of the bone-crunching sensation he’d anticipated, the Autor starts to twist. The suit is torn from the secured glove and sealed point at his shoulder, a burning that tingles and spreads up into the confines of the protective layer. Another timer for Ed to stay on top of: how long until his left arm breaks down, decays in the radiation.

Ed thinks fast, dropping the knife to the other hand, turning as much as he can with the Autor. Well aware that it would take one re-grip for the bones of his arm to become powder, he takes a tactic that had been hanging on him since discovering the charged knives.

Aiming to the ground, he chucks the knife at the steel grate on which the Autor stands, thankful that he’d practiced with his left hand as well as his right. It leaps, lets him go, and is unfortunately fast enough to land on its side and roll back to its feet before the grate is electrified. Running along the panel, its multicolored display leaving a wake, he follows the Autor and, taking the knife from its back presented to him in its disorientation, he plants it into the Autors back.

Turning back to the largest in a rush, he’s pulled up short by a grumbly rant at his back, hefting footsteps chasing him. On the other side of the dash, the larger Autor is tapping at panels, all sorts of rotating images covered in writings appearing under its fingers. The spinning parts begin to flash and the display glitches, turning red.

That can’t be good.

One thing at a fucking time- Ed turns back to the smaller Autor, who is almost upon him, _“~it used to feel so nice it used to feel so good…~”_

He dives over its back, cringing as it collides with the section of the desk he’d just been on. Its back to him, he sees the knife slipping out between the rocky skin, the white charge starting to flicker, used up on its thick casing.

Ed lines up a kick at the knife to slam it past the armored skin.

The Autor’s hand catches his ankle mid-kick- “oh, _shit_.”

To top it off, the second chorus of _S-O-S_ comes at the worst possible moment.

 _“Ed!”_ Kelly’s shriek throws him off, and while he is literally _thrown_ , halfway across the bridge, her voice is what alarms him more.

That’s a dislocated shoulder. Feeling across the back of his head, getting to the feet when the ground under him shakes, there’s no blood yet. _“They’re charging the drive!”_ is Kelly’s message. Ed, being charged at and chased by the Autor, knife still in its back, feels he has slightly more demanding priorities.

“Okay, Kel! What do you want me to do about it?!” He leads the Autor as far from the panels as he can, turning back and fumbling with his belt to find his tapping device that will give Isaac access. Heading for the opposite side of the bridge to the other Autor, there’s a creak and an ache that doesn’t come from the ship- something is wrong with his hip, left leg dipping and buckling the next time he lands on it. He keeps going, “Gord, is the relay working?!”

His ribs ache. His breaths rattle as bad as the floor under however-many tonnes one running Autor weighs.

 _“Yep!”_ Gordon shouts, sounding harried.

Ed slams down the tapper onto the closest panel, trying to listen through the music for any telltale sign as to why Gordon would be out of breath. There hasn’t been the firing of a gun through the comms since he last heard Talla. His legs judder from the stamps of the Autors’ footsteps.

“What are you doing, Gord!?”

 _“Could ask you the same thing you fuckin’-”_ And Ed misses the next bit, shaken into action when the Autor jump down the small step, sending a miniature earthquake through the bridge. He runs and dives, slips under its legs, popping up, whirling around and watching as the large Autor leaves the dashboard, rips the knife from the other’s back. Ed dodges the uncharged knife when it’s thrown at him, hears the clatter as it hits the far wall.

He could see the second one coming from a mile away.

Ripping his left sleeve the rest of the way off, Claire’s shriek over her priority comm not phasing him, _“the radiation, Ed-”_

Ed hits the knife mid-air, catching it by the blunt side as it falls. Careful of the stream of light along it.

The Autors size him up.

He can’t miss.

Running backward, throwing the knife with all his might, there’s another shriek and another Autor landing in a crumbly heap, taking the knife directly below the face.

“Fuck!” He shouts to himself, wondering how much shit he’ll get from Claire this time, bunches of fractured bones, internal bleeding. “One more-”

_“Captain, I have located the two Moort lifesigns-”_

“Where!”

Now, with nothing left to take on a goddamn Autor other than a wrecked leg and his own two fists- one of which is already suffering the effects of the broken core’s radiation –Ed readies himself for another chase, awaiting Isaac’s direction.

 _“They are on the bridge, Captain-”_ and blinding, white-hot pain bursts at Ed’s lower back.

_“~When you’re gone~”_

It’s the only thing he can focus on, apart from the piercing sensation that spreads, sparks throughout his body. Causes a paralysis-type affect, from the pain of it or the location of the injury, it’s hard to tell, _“~how can I, even try, to go on…~”_

His knees buckle, his vision spots and darkens even though he knows his eyes are wide open.

Time slows down.

Ed forgets where he is, for a few seconds.

_“~When you’re gone-~”_

A rapid beeping starts up at the desks, and just when Ed accepts that he has torn a muscle mid-combat and is about to become Autor jello because of his old-man back, something grips his shoulder.

It is not a hand.

The Autor is frozen in place, slammed seconds later by a power blast that sings by Ed’s right ear, blasting a hole right through the torso of the Autor. Rocks and grey flesh are flung, shot out into in the air in all directions. Ed looks down at the translucent appendage that holds his shoulder, holds him upright.

The knife in his back twists.

“Of course, Unions would find us like this,” A raspy voice whispers in his ear, choppy English, “hardly a fair fight…”

_“~Though I try, how can I, carry on…~”_

One half of the wanted Moort pair walks out onto the bridge before Ed’s flickering eyesight, leaving Ed to assume that the one holding him is her counterpart. She kicks up the rocks of the Autors, dawdling, as if bored by the state of the ship. The one behind him presses the knife deeper and he can’t help but cry out, to her amusement: “when Autoron attacked us, we thought we’d let the core break them. But you _would_ interfere, wouldn’t you? This time, we get pleasure, of breaking a Union man-”

_“Ed!? Ed!”_

Talla’s voice echoes, everything echoes, Ed powerless to do anything other than watch the Moort, its long, frog-like hands tapping at the desks. The one central eye blinking sideways, only a filmy coverage that wets the eyeball. _“Ed, talk to me!”_

“Escape pod is good.” She says. Ed’s Moorn is rusty, but he gets the gist. “Let’s get going.”

“Bring the man?”

In English, she replies for him to hear:

“Break him. Or don’t, I couldn’t care.” Her grin comes slowly, revealing the wide lines of teeth, two on the top and one on the bottom. From where he is, Ed swears he can see the purple of Kalvian blood in and around her mouth.

 _“Moorts are known cannibals. They do tend to eat any species they find, if they can bring it down, so it is in your best interests of staying alive to avoid them at all costs,”_ his Species lecturer’s voice comes to him for some ungodly reason in his present state.

The pain, the piano interlude of _S-O-S_ , and the fact that he’s probably seconds from being eaten alive- he can’t feel his feet, can’t control the long groan when the knife presses down, then up, moving when the Moort shifts.

A thin knife draws over his neck, pressing in so he knows it’s there, not enough to puncture anything important.

Ed has never been more grateful for his sensitivity to the sound of PM-44 firing.

The Moort at Ed’s back slams forward, dropping her smaller knife and going limp as soon as the plasma blast hits her. He goes with it, grabbing the knife in his back. Pulling it out, he uses the Moort’s grip to help rip out its serrated teeth when his arms shake and shake. Ed knows he’s going weak. Time is almost up- for him, and for the crew he dragged into this mess- he should’ve gone with his gut. Should have shot the ship when he’d had the chance-

With a spin, he uses the momentum to lob the knife at the other Moort, pinning her hand to the drive board. He whips his gun out and before she can say another word, before she can get to her own knife or tear free from the one pinning her, the shot he lets off catches her square in the eye.

“Holy shit!” Chakravarthi is screaming from the upper deck- Ed turns, tries to spot her. Dark swirls are overtaking his vision. “All due respect, Captain- that was _rad as fuck_!” Her voice grounds him, fills him with strength, reminds him that the clock is still ticking and although their Class-X criminals are well and truly neutralized, they all still need to get off the broken scrapper ship.

Ed just took a knife to the back, which really fucking hurts, hurts so bad he can no longer feel the site of the wound and instead feels all the areas around it, affected by it. Since it was his back, every movement pulls it. Pulls him further away from reality. He’d rather lie down, than do anything more. Not to mention all the paperwork he’s going to have to do, for the Class-X pair _and_ the ship of scrappers.

Would they leave him if he told them to? Definitely not. So Ed has to make sure they have the time to save his stupid butt, along with escaping the ship.

Great. He’s on death’s door walking, and all he can think about is fucking paperwork and ABBA and being willingly left for dead.

_“~So when you’re near me, darling, can’t you hear me, S-O-S..~”_

His breath heaves, grates in and out. Something’s been pierced in there, it’s so hard to tell what. No matter how hard he pants, how he tries to force air into him, his skin starts to feel cold and sticky inside the suit.

Ed is going to die- _you’re gonna die_ , the part-panic and part-blood-loss irrationality screams at him, vaguely in a voice like Gordon’s, and all of a sudden, the only thing he can think of is Gordon, somewhere on this ship, listening to him go. Gordon, who won’t even pause the song while Ed imagines hugging him one last time. Gordon, who Ed looked at, went by-the-book for, has almost gotten himself killed for, because he knows how Gordon hates unresolved ties, because he remembers Gordon’s reaction to seeing Orrin’s ‘ _MIA’_ status tick over to ‘ _deceased_ ’. Gordon, and all the shit Ed still has to say to him.

Gordon, on the end of his comms, _“Ed, I’m on my way, don’t fucking move- stop fucking- Ed!”_

“Thanks,” Ed shouts back to Chakravarthi, her words rattling around. How long ago had she said them? Not very long, since Ed is still standing. His sense of touch goes next, stumbling his way to the panel on wobbling legs, the left one hobbling and dragging slightly. He shuts down the drive by turning the wheels until they turn back to the neutral yellow- he did something right, the alarm switching off, Isaac’s voice of _“the drive isn’t charging. Now would be the optimal time to return to the shuttle, Captain.”_

His handprints leave sticky patterns, appearing black against the blinding light of the panel that grows and grows until all he can see is white, and black, “Talla- we’re all good down here-” his legs finally giving out.

Sound is the last thing to go.

 

He swears he hears Gordon’s voice shouting at him, not down the comm in his ear, where the sweet song keeps playing, _“~the love you gave me, nothing else can save me, S-O-S…~”_

 

Next thing he remembers- but isn’t one-hundred percent sure about the validity of his perceptions of the real world, right now –is Gordon, carrying him onto the shuttle and sitting him on a chair. Talla yelling at him, his _“we’re gonna make it, we’re gonna make it, if we all die blame fuckin’ Mercer,”_ the shouts of everyone onboard the shuttle as it is rocked through space.

It’s a feverish onslaught of sensations, but it’s there, all in dots and splotches of his blood, dark on the red of Gordon’s shirt.

There’s no music. There rarely is, on the way back from a mission.

“Hey.” Ed says. Delirious and probably too quiet or too loud, so he repeats himself. “Hey, Gord.”

“What?” Gordon is focused on flying. Ed recognizes the lights, their exact brilliance, the way they move over the dash of the shuttle.

They’re back on the Orville. They’ve made it back.

That’s awesome.

“I forgot,” he says, because he did, and then he remembers, “oh yeah- no, nevermind.”

He forgets again. He’d had something to tell Gordon, last time he’d been in the shuttle bay. What was it?

Gordon is silent for what feels like years. Ed tries to watch him, body shutting down bit-by-bit.

The way Gordon’s head shifts, shoulders static, tense while his arms move to land the shuttle. Oddly beautiful. He’s always thought that about Gordon- his childishness, his grit, the way he pisses almost everyone off and endears himself to them at the same time. That thing he does when he’s sad, where he smiles and walks away and Ed feels like he’s sinking.

He feels the landing gear engage. His eyes fall shut without him wanting them to. It isn’t a bother, really. They’d started to sting so badly from the change in lighting. From staring at Gordon’s back, thinking _this is the last time I’ll see him_ , and then Gordon speaks up:

“Tell me you didn’t do that to impress me, Ed.”

It sounds like a joke. Ed doesn’t know whether to joke back, _“yeah, sure,”_ or tell the truth, _“no, but it was for you. It was supposed to make things better. I was supposed to…”_

Nothing starts to go through Ed’s mind.

Nothing. There isn’t much for Ed to think about, the _one_ time Ed wants to think about Gordon. Typical.

He’d heard Gordon speak, the words long gone. Only the imprint of the sound of his voice. Warm and fuzzy feelings are left behind, a stamp and a seal that could send Ed under, though that could very easily be the nerve damage or the slow spread of blood under his radiation suit.

Might be both. It definitely might be both. What had Gordon said? How long has it been? Is Ed dying now? Finally?

The click, a loud hum, the shuttle door hitting the ground, and Gordon, a trembling to it: “ _Ed_. I swear to God. Answer me.”

The words come out, unplanned, uneasy:

“I’m not that easy, huh.”

“Ed, _shut up_.”

The shuttle feels like it’s moving, spinning.

As he tries to open his eyes, he feels all his soreness again and is almost sick, at the sight of shuttle roof swaying as if he is flying through it, out into the shuttle bay. It’s getting too hard to draw breath. Not from the crunch he feels in the bones around his lungs, no. His throat, the way he takes in air, his ability to push it back out- all of it is failing. He wants nothing more than to drop off, give it all up, even as he realizes Gordon must be carrying him all the way to the medbay. Gordon had carried Ed all the way to the shuttle, probably, too.

Ed feels like he should marry him for that. Or something.

“You’re awesome, Gord-”

“Shut the fuck up- _Claire_! Thank fuck-”

Her voice is as winded as Gordon’s, not as frantic. Ed wants to smile at the confidence she brings, at a time like this.

“You- flew so fast, I didn’t have- time to get-”

“Just-” Ed is dropped a short distance to a bed, the rising of his stomach and the cloudiness of his head making it seem like he’s still falling, through the bed, out of the ship, freezing, freezing- “I’ll push, you do your thing.”

And there goes the little zap, systems-out, a tick of the nerves Ed has come to know means he’s hit his end.

The world goes black again, not fast enough to save him from Kelly’s _“fuck, he’s-! What in the fuck did he just do?! Talla, I want you to get him one of those kiddie backpacks, the ones with the animals and the tails you can use as leads. Gordon, you’re getting one, too.”_

The ensuing screaming-match between Kelly and Gordon warps in and out.

_“I didn’t do shit!”_

_“You abandoned your post when Ed told you to fucking stay-”_

_“I also stopped that fucker from killing him!”_

_“You’re lucky you didn’t hit him!!”_

_“I know how to fuckin’ use a PM, alright?!”_

_“I wouldn’t trust it!”_

_“Whatever! We’re lucky that knife wasn’t charged-”_

_“We’re lucky?!”_

_“Fuck me, Kel, he’s alive, isn’t he?!?”_

_“Barely!! You risked the lives of everyone on that shuttle-”_

_“I saved his…”_ A ringing, and words blurring together.

 _“Talla was-”_ The crack of the breaks. Claire, _“stop it, both of…”_ fading out.

 

The _next_ thing Ed remembers is the familiar noises of the medbay, and is rudely shot into full consciousness from senseless sleep by Henry Park's distinctive cackling. He opens his eyes, greeted by a very shocked-looking Gordon.

Ed lifts his left arm a little, then his right. Searches for Claire for guidance, finds her at the foot of his bed, considering a trio of injectors.

"What?" Ed asks, dumbly, hoarse and slow.

Henry laughs harder and Claire cracks up, smiling wide and fond as she comes around the table, neatly pushing Gordon aside so she can administer a tube of whatever she decided on. It flicks into his arm, and Ed is too distracted to watch it go, because if Claire is laughing on the job, he’s done something _terrible_. “What did I say?” His voice breaks.

Gordon groans, buries his face in his hands. The tips of his red ears give away his flush- that, above all else, freaks Ed out.

He mutters:

"I can't believe it."

"Can't believe _what_!" Ed tries to shout, unable to manage more than a rasp.

Instead of answering him, Gordon starts pacing. Claire pushes Ed down as he tries to rise, and Ed realizes he’s very weak. She must see the anxiousness and, in an attempt to put him at ease, tells him:

"You… Told Gordon you love him. Several times. And that you want to marry him, and then expressed that you were scared of marrying him because of Kelly. Or, something along those lines, we think.”

She regrets it immediately, knew it wouldn’t calm him down any. She would rather have an Ed freaking out about something he knows he’s done than an Ed freaking out about something he’s done without knowing what it was. True to it, Ed freezes up. She sighs: "don’t worry, Captain. You made it very clear it wasn’t in a friendly way. We could have guessed from the marriage declaration, but you must have thought that was important to get across, hm."

Somewhere in the room, Henry is wheezing.

"Oh fuckin’-" Ed tries to sit up again, Claire practically shoving him back this time, "I didn’t _kiss_ you, right?"

"You might as well have!" Gordon sounds pissed off, but Ed catches the little laugh after it.

“I need to turn you over so I can fix that back, Captain.” Says Claire, continuing as if the insanity around her isn’t happening.

“Good.” Ed huffs, and Henry completely loses it, so badly that Claire orders him to remove himself from the room, injecting Ed at the same time. “As soon as I’m up, I am taking you on the best fuckin’ date of your goddamn life, Gordon Malloy.”

“Good.” Gordon copies him, leaves in a hurry. Outside, Henry sounds like he’s crying with laughter, _“you two are perfect for each other!”_

Ed loves this ship. Everyone laughs a lot. He laughs, too, as whatever Claire gave him starts to drug him out into delirium, on to a forced blackout, his last words being a mumbled _“I did not want it to go like that, Claire,”_ and what he thinks is her reply of _“well maybe becoming an Autoron beach-ball and getting stabbed in the back should have been lower on your to-do list, huh.”_

 

 

 

**DAY 28**

 

Ed Mercer is a man of many talents- and, according to Gordon Malloy yet vehemently denied by Kelly Greyson, romance _is_ one of them. The Alpha-shift bridge crew is quickly made aware of this fact, thanks to Gordon telling them every single detail of their first date: a short trip to the nearby outpost Ed orders them to from his medbay bed, located on a small moon he and Gordon walk the circumference of over the course of six hours, stopping for a picnic, going for a swim in the naturally heated pools.

How does Ed know Gordon tells everyone about the date? Not through rumors, not through sly ' _nice going, Captain_ 's on his way to the next shift he’s given clearance to attend, no.

As he steps foot on the bridge, Gordon, seeing him coming, makes a devastating split-second decision. Perfectly timing the ending of whatever over-exaggerated story he'd been telling of the date, he finishes it off with a dramatic _"and the sex was phenomenal!"_

Never in his life has Ed been so quick to turn around and walk back the way he came, double-time.

 

Ed Mercer has never missed a shift of work in his life.

Earthdate twenty-eight of February, 2421, is an outlier and should not be counted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**DAY 01**

Leaving their shift, shoving at each other and laughing- it’s so normal.

Not much has changed.

And yet, everything about them is changing.

Claire’s voice greets Ed in the simulator, through the comms, _“Ed, you’re not cleared for heavy physical activity, yet,”_ and Gordon laughs as he speaks, setting up their usual sparring sim:

“He’ll go easy on me, Claire.”

 

“This is better than any date.”

Gordon is ten-down, not one win to Ed’s streak, “don’t get me wrong- _loved_ the walk. Ten outta ten, would do again.”

The soil is marred by their footsteps and falls, the trees bend and move on all sides of their fight, not a breath of simulated wind to move them.

“Stick to your strengths?” Ed teases, breaking the banterless period that started around Ed’s sixth victory.

“Nah,” twirling his sword, passing it from hand to hand, Gordon eases off out of their eleventh round, “somehow, you with murder intent is hot.”

“You’re so weird.”

“But you love me.”

“Shut _up_.”

Ed lets the flutter of his heart go, has to roll his shoulders back with the force of it. He swipes at Gordon, in the air between them, before advancing, speaking fondly: “I do love you.”

“Then kick my ass.” He raises his own saber, cuts the showy shit out and readies himself. His words would throw Ed off, if Ed didn’t know Gordon so well.

“You’re so…” He trails off with a sigh, and then proceeds to do just that: kicking Gordon’s ass.

Or, he tries. Gordon dodges, and when Ed goes to follow, he’s met with a prepared blade. Parrying is difficult, the radiation that affected his left arm causing a weakness in it. A tremor he hasn’t yet shaken, has left behind a map of scarring Claire warned him might be permanent.

“What,” now Gordon is teasing him, sidesteps the counter Ed can usually catch him out on. He lands a hard strike to the flat side of Ed’s saber, smirk full-force as he watches Ed stagger, “cool? Smart? Attractive?”

“Stupid.” Ed says, with a snort, coming right back to Gordon.

Gordon, who blocks his jab and starts up a flurry Ed can only block and block, punctuates every single word with a strike:

“Alright, Sir let-me-rip-off-my-shirt-to-catch-a-deadly-knife, yeah, sure thing, Mister it’s-time-to-jump-in-front-of-a-Lun’s-beam-to-save-Bortus, Ed fuck-Captain-lives Mercer who is a Captain himself-”

“I get it!” Finally getting a way in, Ed manages to send Gordon’s saber flying out of his hand, winning again. The saber light flickers as it lands in the dirt. Gordon raises his hands and laughs. Somehow, to Ed, it seems as if Gordon didn’t lose.

Ed hates losing, but he doesn’t feel like he’s lost, either. The scoreboard counts it to his name, anyway.

_Ed: eleven, Gordon: zero._

Off Gordon goes, heading for his saber. Ed drops his from attention. And, when Gordon’s words process- joking as they may have appeared –he speaks, quietly: “Claire is really digging in to me on it.”

“You deserve it.” Already on his way back and dragging the tip of the saber through the dirt, there’s softness in Gordon’s eyes. Even if the rest of his face is steely, he’s beautiful to Ed. “You- you deserve to be told off and shit, but you also deserve to live. Or fuckin' whatever, you know?”

Ironically, Gordon nearly kills him on his next attack.

There is a shift in the tension between them. Gordon is on the attack and Ed is backtracking, forced to up his game whilst sticking to defensive methods. It is easy, for Ed, to read on Gordon’s face that he’s got something on his mind. A few words of what he’s feeling make it out, amidst his physical let-off of what must be troubling thoughts: “you’re _going_ to fuck this up, Ed. That’s how things _are_.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Is Gordon’s oddly sharp reply to Ed’s curtness. “Kelly- I get it. It’s- _scary_ , and you’re- you _know_ , what happened between you. How it went wrong- but you have let it stop you, haven’t you.”

“Honestly, I wasn’t over it until we started working together, until she transferred here…”

Their fighting has taken a dive in pace. Gordon doesn’t seem to be happy with this- and Ed agrees, is nearly too distracted by the idea of calling their game to an end, ducking the blow Gordon aims directly at his head.

Kelly is something he holds on to like a safety blanket. The real feelings of friendship fight with the residual of what they’d had, worsened when Ed gets down on himself. And Ed gets down on himself _a lot_. He’s been the least helpful person in his healing process, in the concise and accurate way Claire had put it. Not allowing for growth: not after he realized the ways he’d acted, the hurt he caused during their marriage and after it, “I’m not over it.”

He’s not. He isn’t going to be, until he fixes the way he approaches relationships, inappropriate at a fundamental level.

“I wouldn’t expect you to be-”

“I don’t-” Gordon nearly gets him again at the middle of his emotionally-charged confession- “Want to go through it again.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Although Gordon doesn’t stop his incessant attack that Ed is starting to think he’ll lose to, he does snort at that.

“I scraped you off the fuckin’ ground, but, no. I guess I don’t...” Which is the truth, to some extent. Gordon had given Ed supports, but between the two, Kelly had become the antagonist. Ed hadn’t accepted the wrong he’d done, beyond what he remembered from his and Kelly’s arguments. Gordon hadn’t understood- nor had Ed –that the breaking of their marriage was a failure on both parts. Over time, his acceptance of his role in it became almost as obsessive as his animosity towards Kelly.

And along the way, Ed decided that he didn’t need love.

Yet here they both are, Gordon saying _“computer, play ABBA’s Take A Chance on Me,_ ” ready to keep scraping Ed up and up until he gets back into a shape he can start feeling proud of, until Gordon has shown has shown Ed just how deserving of it he is.

And Ed is reminded of how much he loves this man.

He loves him so much, the cheesy beginning of the song and the big, cheesy smile Gordon sends him between the flashes of pink and red and yellow. The cheesy promise that leaves his lips: “I’m willing to take that chance, though. If you are.”

_“~If you’re all alone, when the pretty birds have flown~”_

Ed can’t hesitate:

“I am.”

“Are you?”

It’s a joke, and Ed laughs.

Gordon gets a hit on Ed, Ed not stopping to check for blood because like hell is he going to falter at a little nick, and after a few more poorly blocked attacks, Gordon gets closer, giving them little pause to breathe, giving Ed no break while he laughs to himself, “fuck, when did I get so mature…”

“ _Really_.” Ed is sweating, close to running, getting some space to throw Gordon off of this relentlessness that is fitting in its on way to the music, _“~honey I’m still free, take a chance on me~”_

“When did you get so emotionally mature, you big man baby.” Gordon taunts.

“I’m not a-”

“You _so_ are!”

“I’m not here to be insulted!”

On his way to winning, Gordon traps Ed up, backs him into a tree, saber hovering, threatening over Ed’s chest, _“~if you’ve got no place to go, if you’re feeling down~”_

“Well, I’m not here to mess around.” Baiting him, Gordon presses in, the slightest bit. Drops his sword, when Ed tries to sneak his up against Gordon’s left side.

“I’ve beaten you eleven times,” he pants, can feel Gordon’s breath fanning over his cheeks, smelling of the beer he’d snuck onto the bridge at some point during their shift, “I’ll do it again.”

“Do it, you coward-”

Ed pitches forward, shouldering Gordon now that the saber is out of the way. He hooks an arm over Gordon’s shoulder and yanks him downward, bringing the butt of his saber around until it slams into Gordon’s stomach, keeping Gordon from bringing his own saber across his body and getting a good hit on him in the process. Releasing Gordon and shoving him backward, the moment between Gordon catching his feet underneath himself and Ed swinging his sword is slowed down in Ed’s world, filled with Gordon’s bright laughter, “that’s more like it!”

“Gordon-”

“Come on…” He wheedles at Ed, pacing around to the left, Ed mirroring him and stepping to the right. They circle, not wanting to be the first to strike- Ed out of concern for his health, Gordon hoping for Ed to give him bruises, or something along those lines, very _Gordon_ , “what Claire doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

“It’ll hurt _me_.”

Ed doesn’t care about it hurting him. He cares more about giving Claire more work than she needs.

He can totally pin this on Gordon, though, can’t he.

“Then make it fuckin’ count.”

“Why do you want to fight me?” Ed mutters to himself, “why do I love you?”

 _“~You know I’ve got~”_ Gordon starts to sing along, blocking Ed’s strike, _“~so much I wanna do, when I dream I’m alone with you~”_

Ed stops Gordon’s counter, spins, kicking out behind him and sending Gordon toppling.

_Ed: twelve, Gordon: one._

“Wait, wait,” Ed turns his back on Gordon, glaring up at the board, “computer, stop the music- Gord, when did you get-”

Sudden silencing of the room gives Ed enough warning to hear Gordon coming, not enough for him to turn and fight. Instead of a saber, though, he is body-slammed by Gordon, feels legs wrap around his waist and arms clamp over his shoulders. The warmth and sweat of his back sticking into his shirt and Gordon’s laughter rumbling through.

“I win.” Is the arrogant, heavy exhale against Ed's neck. He settles against Ed’s back like an overgrown koala. Wriggles around for a moment, Ed whispering _“you right, there?”_ and grinning, stupidly fond at Gordon’s contented _“mm-hm.”_

And it’s just _not fair_ that Gordon gets away with weaseling a point, thinking his cuteness will convince Ed into letting him get away with it.

Lowly, as loud and threatening as he can make it, Ed starts to sing:

_“~I will be wonderful, and they said wonderful~”_

Tilting his weight back, Gordon plant his feet and drops, dragging Ed to the ground with him, swearing  _“cut that out right fuckin’ now!”_ He catches Ed’s arms as he tries to roll Gordon off of him, warbling and wavering under Gordon’s weight, _“~believe me it’s hard to resist, cuz it feels-”_

“Ed!”

“I won, you bastard!” He breaks off to shouts up at Gordon, Gordon’s smirking, giggling face, and Gordon’s beautiful smile and his messed up red hair and everything, Gordon, Gordon, Gordon, Ed lets himself think. Lies back, defeated in the dirt of the sim that fades out when Gordon clicks his fingers and calls for the simulation to end. When had he dropped his saber pack- when did his hand reach up and run along the side of Gordon’s face, first with his knuckles, then with the palm of his hand?

Why is Gordon letting him do it?

Gordon sings, so quiet Ed nearly misses it at first, getting louder when he must see Ed’s expression- the elation threatening to burst his heart:

_“~Wonderful, they’ll call you wonderful, trust me it’s fine…_

_“When you are wonderful, it would be wonderful, wonderful, wonderful…~”_

“I love you,” Ed finishes for him, feels Gordon punch him in the chest but can't look anywhere other than Gordon's eyes, “Let’s go get dinner?”

“Tired already?” But Gordon is standing, helping Ed up, gentle with Ed’s left hand. He doesn’t let it go. Not as they make their way out of the simulator, all the way down the hallways, through the mess hall, sitting at their table, Ed flushing but refusing to shy away from the stares he gets, interrupting their absent bickering to tell him  _“Gordon, you can let go of me any time you want.”_

_“Don’t wanna.”_

_“Alright. That’s fine.”_

_“Fine.”_

_“Good.”_

_“Cool.”_

_“Alright.”_

_“…”_

_“…”_

_“I still think bees are-”_

_“Will you drop it!?”_

_“No! Not now I know you think it’s a good idea too.”_

_“As your boss, and trust me when I say I hate to tell you that it is extremely against-regulation.”_

_“As my boss you could make an exception to the rules for me?”_

_“No! I already let you drink on the bridge!”_

_“Yeah? And?”_

_“Fuck, you’re just.”_

_“Uh-huh?”_

_“You’re so fucking…”_

_“Mh-hm, and?”_

_“You are the- just the absolute. Fuck.”_

_“How are you my boss, again?”_

_“Shut up.”_

_“How did I end up with a dumbass like you.”_

_“Gordon, please.”_

_"How did I end up with you."_

_"Gordon..."_

_“Jeeze, we’re idiots.”_

_“You got that right.”_

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Its not even late and im singing All The Way and highkey tearing up because of edgord. i have.. it bad my dudes. idk what 'it' is but its here..
> 
> Writing isaac’s bit was so fun!1 I love my bot boy, sorry if it made no sense. It was just an excuse for me to use correlations and stuff because Fuck Statistics My Dudes.
> 
> If yall wanna go listen to some songs mentioned in this, I highly suggest 'Moon River' and 'All the way' by henry mancini https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ed07ogWgiw and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu_UvlEXJ8I, the two songs ed plays/sings on the piano. The instrumental bit he does is 'unchained memory' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isIagcpaBAs. Yall can thank DieAstra for showing me seth macfarlane’s instagram vids of him playing piano. ;-; he plays the theme from ‘the last unicorn’ too so if u like that ;-; that’s a thing ;;;-;;; im also gonna put the link here again to seth singing ‘come fly with me’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzVprkrNlT8 because I want to watch it again..  
> AND the song from wicked he and claire sing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96P47MYipmY but claire kinda just joins in a lot because Claire Finn ;0; skip to 40sec in for when im thinking it starts in this
> 
> Ensign Roue [the one who replaces LaMarr as navigator] is my OC who is.. my child now. He is.. very good. He will probably appear in every fic I do. He was created before my first posted fic and maybe before I started actually writing any fic. I am.. very attached to this lil alien man. I never make OCs but him and Michaels.. ...... Yes.
> 
>  
> 
> AS FOR EDGORD. Well. I’ve officially posted one established relationship, and one get-together, this one featuring a lot of dumbassery and the other one a little more serious but still pretty.. nice. Overall very conventional, nothing too out-there or *X-Files theme* ‘freaky’ and as off-the-rails as I want to be writing.  
> Time for an alternative.. \o/ coming soon to a trashfire near you [the trashfire being this account, as well as my life]


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